Associated Press Drops 'Illegal Immigrant' From Stylebook

[CG6468]

Associated Press Drops 'Illegal Immigrant' From Stylebook

Associated Press Office in New York City. (Ben Hider/Getty Images)

By CRISTINA COSTANTINI (@xtinatini)
April 2, 2013

The Associated Press, the largest news-gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term "illegal immigrant."

The news came in the form of a blog entry authored by Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Tuesday afternoon, explaining that the decision is part of the company's on-going attempt to rid their Stylebook of labels.

"The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term 'illegal immigrant' or the use of 'illegal' to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that 'illegal' should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally," Carroll wrote.

The company's decision comes after years of controversy over the term. Fusion, the ABC-Univision joint venture, does not use "illegal immigrant" because we believe it dehumanizes those it describes and we find it to be linguistically inaccurate.

We wrote last year about how most of America's top college newspapers and major TV networks, including ABC, NBC and CNN, have vowed to stop using the term. Nearly half of Latino voters polled last year in a Fox News Latino survey said that they find the term "illegal immigrant" offensive. A coalition of linguists also came together last year to pressure media companies to drop "illegal immigrant," calling it "neither neutral nor accurate." And some critics of the term, like journalist Maria Hinojosa, argue that those newsrooms that have continued to classify people as "illegal" lack diversity.

Last fall, the AP said they would restrict the usage of "illegal immigrant" to certain circumstances due to the complexity of the immigration experience. Paul Colford, the director of media relations for the AP, addressed the issue in an email, saying that "ongoing, lively, internal conversation" about "illegal immigrant" continued after that announcement.

How about Wetback, or undocumented criminal democrat?

[thundley4]

"The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term 'illegal immigrant' or the use of 'illegal' to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that 'illegal' should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally," Carroll wrote.

WTF?  Talk about newspeak.   Jamal killed two people in a drive-by shooting, but don't cal Jamal a killer or a murderer.

[J P Sousa]

Well, I think by doing this the Associated Press has confirmed they have changed from a news organization to a democrat propaganda outlet.


They also have banned other words including, “illegal alien”.

One commenter suggested they should replace illegal immigrant with "new democrats".

[Ptarmigan]

Coming from a highly litigious group.