More Associated Press Woke Word Policing In New Style Guide Changes

More Associated Press Woke Word Policing In New Style Guide Changes

As we’ve frequently documented, the Associated Press Stylebook has become little more than a manipulative tool used by far-left newsrooms to promote dangerous, agenda-driven word policing, which in turn has better enabled them to control and further advance woke agendas and narratives while fostering a forced GroupThink atmosphere.

Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• Associated Press Reporters Can Only Describe Hamas Terrorists as Militants, ‘Fighters, Attackers, or Combatants’
• The Associated Press Thoroughly Beclowns Itself With Stylebook Change on the Word ‘The’
• AP Stylebook Goes to Bat for Dems on ‘Pregnant People’ Having Abortions
• AP Stylebook Now Says Don’t Call Riots “Riots”
• Associated Press Will Capitalize Black, But Not White Since They Haven’t Faced Discrimination Due to Skin Color
• Political takeover of language nears completion — AP bans “illegal immigrants”

On Friday, some new style changes were announced ahead of the release of the print version of their 2024-2026 stylebook, which will be available May 29th.

As detailed by the ACES website during their annual conference in San Diego, some of the changes revolved around political correctness in referring to overweight people as well as the terminology used for homeless people:

Another entry change [Stylebook lead editor Paula] Froke pointed to is the entry for “Obesity, obese, overweight.” In part, the entry says: “People with obesity, people of higher weights and people who prefer the term fat use diverse terms – including those and others – in reference to themselves.

“Use care and precision, considering the impact of specific words and the terms used by the people you are writing about. When possible, ask people how they want to be described.”

The new stylebook guidance says the word obese shouldn’t be used as a modifier if possible.

[…]

An entry on “Homeless, homelessness” that says to avoid the term “unhoused,” other than when quoting people, if an organization uses the term or if people use it for themselves. “AP beat editors whose staffs cover homelessness urged us to avoid the term, saying it sounds like jargon or a euphemism and isn’t widely used or recognized by most people,” Froke said.

And as the Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil observed, climate change got a big mention in the updated guide:

Yet one of the largest sections of the updated style guide involves “climate change,” a term that AP says “can be used interchangeably” with the term “climate crisis.”

“Climate change, resulting in the climate crisis, is largely caused by human activities that emit carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies, science organizations and climate scientists,” the AP style guide intones. “This happens from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and other activities.”

“Greenhouse gases are the main driver of climate change,” the guide adds.

As Legal Insurrection previously reported, “the Associated Press took millions of dollars in donations and used it to fund its ‘climate crisis’ coverage” in 2022, something the AP called “philanthropy-funded news.”

Something else announced during the 2024 ACES conference was that the AP was switching to the Merriam-Webster dictionary as its primary dictionary:

We are making our first change in our primary dictionary in decades, turning to @MerriamWebster as our first source.
We announced our new partnership today at the @ACESEditors conference. We will officially make the transition when we publish our new print edition May 29.

— APStylebook (@APStylebook) April 5, 2024

In fact, they also declared that in the event the AP didn’t have a stylebook rule about a word they would defer to what Merriam-Webster had to say about it:

It is the first change to the stylebook’s primary dictionary in decades. If a term isn’t listed in the stylebook, its entry in Merriam-Webster will be considered AP style. Froke and Merriam-Webster editor at large Peter Sokolowski announced the change at a panel at the annual ACES: The Society for Editing conference.

“Merriam-Webster is updated far more frequently to reflect new terms, evolving usage and other developments. We have long consulted Merriam-Webster to help guide our decisions, even when it wasn’t our official dictionary,” Froke told Poynter in an email. “Overall, we find Merriam-Webster more aligned with the AP Stylebook’s needs and approach.”

Like other dictionary publishers and websites, Merriam-Webster has occasionally altered the definitions of words to suit Democrat talking points, as we saw for example when they conveniently changed the meaning of the word “preference” after Democrats attacked then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s use of the term “sexual preference” during her 2020 confirmation hearings.

And during then-President Donald Trump’s administration, Merriam-Webster became the darlings of the Very Online Left and Media World with their periodic trolling of the president and members of his administration.

All of that taken into consideration gives a much deeper meaning to Froke’s quote about how “we find Merriam-Webster more aligned with the AP Stylebook’s needs and approach.”

The AP should change the “P” in their abbreviation to mean “propaganda,” because that’s basically all they are now.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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