For a long time, subs could rely on a basic rule of thumb - if the Prime Minister or the Pope said it, it was fit for publication. But like everything else in this crazy, upside-down world of ours, that's been thrown right out the fucking window by the current President of the United States.
Donald Trump's reported use of the term 'shit-holes' to describe countries that were full of brown people sparked a lot of earnest discussion in newsrooms across the world, and New Zealand's media was no exception. Most of them went straight ahead and used the phrase without any censoring, while some came up with some impressively complicated ways of reporting on it, without ever actually using the word.
There is some irony in the news media losing their shit over the use of a swear word, because newsrooms are famously full of profanity. People whose job it is to produce straight-faced reports are only too happy to let fly with all sorts of vulgar language in the safety of a busy team of reporters, editors and producers. The more restrained they are on air or in print, the more they enjoy cutting loose when thousands of people aren't listening to them.
In fact, one of the few great perks of working in a newsroom full of broadcast journalists is getting to hear the most sensible voices in NZ media sound off with a healthy dose of words that would get them in deep shit if they ever went out over the air. John Campbell, for instance, is an absolutely legendary swearer, punching out profanity with as much passion as he puts into his social commentary, and there is all sorts of delight in hearing all the newsreaders slip in the odd unacceptable word when they're rehearsing for the next bulletin.
Of course, the use of such language by journos has inevitably led to claims of hypocrisy, because there have been so many news stories about Mr Trump's presidential language, when it's the kind of vocabulary that the media are only too happy to use in their daily lives.
But this misses the point of almost all of the coverage of Trump's shit-hole remark. The language doesn't matter, it just reinforces the odious opinion behind it, and that's the real story. It's not what he says, it what he means.
Profanity is never the actual point, it's a just a linguistic technique that puts the emphasis on something, that highlights a point, or shows how passionate about a particular subject the speaker is. It underscores their basic idea, it's not the actual idea itself.
In the case of Trump, it doesn't fucking matter what exact words he uses, the real story is that he was revealing his own racist tendencies, by writing off parts of the world as pure shitholes. His true feelings were exposed.
By using the shithole term, President Donald Trump wasn't just telling the world that he's a racist dick, he was telling us that he is a fucking racist dick.
Language is an ever-changing creature, and the way we decide what words are acceptable and which aren't inevitably change over the years. We're still a long way from seeing the words like fuck or cunt in headlines, but with the current shit-gibbon in the White House, who the hell know how long that is going to last.
- Katherine Grant
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