Should the media restricts its coverage of events that threatennational security?

Does the media coverage of violence create more violence?   Should the media refrain from too much media coverage of potential events like the burning of the Koran?  These are important questions facing the media as well as the government in times when there are stressful situations.

 The problem of how words are used to affect thinking is a frequent public criticism and journalist debate and valuable to discourse, experts say.

Journalism symposiums have brought up the issue of how the media impacts behavior, as there is an ongoing research on these issues. Others are examining the effects of media violence on human behavior.Rutgers' new research established, for example, that we are what we watch, that the more aggressive material we see and hear, the more aggressive we become.
Perhaps that is also true of what is reported.

Issues concerning public dialogue, political opinions, decisions and the press are now being debated in every corner of the globe as journalism shifts and changes. Years ago S.I. Hayakawa wrote a book called “Language in Thought and Action.” The book discussed how words frame our behavior. This is what one writer observes in reflecting on the issues of journalism and how it affects human behavior for good or ill. He declares we need to get beyond what he terms “two valued logic” and reach a balance in how we accept or reject material. The book has been considered by linguistics and language instructors to be classic.


Notess says, in his discussion, “I believe that every high School senior should read and understand the contents before graduating. Too many writers on current affairs discuss the polarization in our society, yet do not mention the ideas in this book as an important contributor to problems of polarization in our society. He says we need to get beyond the concrete definitions of what news is and means to higher levels of abstraction that will allow us to respond on multiple levels of abstraction. " 

Hayakawa addresses the ethical issues involved in language. Writers must be aware of how their words affect their readers and how they might influence racial bias, cultural stereotyping and political divisions, he wrote. The following site outlines a course on his material. Hayakawa was considered by political theoreticians to be of the conservative orientation; yet his classic book is said to represent the neutral ground for understanding the impact of words on behaviors. Less is known about its impact on journalism in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Canada and other areas of the world such as South Africa or Japan, where journalism issues are discussed; but the classic remains as one in some contemporary discourse as noted by readers' discussions across the Internet.

Hayakawa is still considered a good read by those who work with and want to understand the use of language and how language interacts with behaviors. Years ago, in the 1960's, in the United States, it was commonly assigned reading for journalism and special writing classes. Yet it remains among those favored by individuals seeking to understand how critically language impacts what happens in the culture and how we phrase things as journalists impacts what the public believes and how it responds. One reader said this just within the past year:

“A classic in the field of modern linguistics. Hayakawa was, among many things, President of San Francisco State University, United States Senator from California, and President of the Institute of General Semantics. I first read it in a journalism class in college. I was already familiar with most of the main ideas in GS but reading Hayakawa's book in my early 20s really influenced my thinking. The idea that language shapes the way we think and react is not exclusive to GS, but it is an exceptionally valuable idead. Please read this book and any other ones you can find like it.”

This book, often cited in literature about the use of language, had as its author, S. I. Hayakawa, someone interested in the conveyance of language, but also as it affected human behavior, as a politician himself as well as a theoretician. He was the first member of the Bohemian Club of Japanese ancestry and a lover of traditional jazz.

Those who want to understand whether the public creates the news or how writers may affect what people do and think and what the responsibilities are can find within the pages of“Language in Thought and Action” some of what is being discussed with respect to journalist – public discourse, as it remains what many declare fundamental material for understanding language and its impact on behavior. It reflects what is being discussed in present journalism news and consequent to its understanding. Those experts now reviewing media bias in language continue to turn to this book.

Can journalists create a different atmosphere for moderate political and social discourse? That's the question that the experts will need to evaluate since journalists are both consumers as well as reporters of news, therefore impacted by the world in which they live, as Rutgers research demonstrates. In other words we can create more or less discord and verbal violence by how and what we write and say.  It is for that reason, language experts say, we should be moderate in how news is reported, especially during stressful times when situations, like the burning of the Koran, could seriously hurt national security and international affairs. 

What Hillary Clinton has suggested, as the media restricting its coverage on events like the burning of the Koran reflects what language experts recommend in research on what might happen when words that can incite violence.

, r