Is the term ‘majority-Muslim’ pejorative?

Wall Street Journal editor raises eyebrows for stance on newsroom terminology

At the beginning of the week, Wall Street Journal editors were told to stop referring to the countries subject to President Trump’s travel ban as “majority-Muslim” nations by editor in chief Gerard Baker.

In a staff email, Baker said that the widely used term is “very loaded.”

“The reason they’ve been chosen is not because they’re majority-Muslim but because they’re on the list of countries Obama identified as countries of concern,” Baker wrote to top editors, according to BuzzFeed, which obtained the message.

BuzzFeed reported that some journalists at the newspaper are upset by Baker’s order, which immediately raised eyebrows outside the Journal’s newsroom, too.

Baker’s rationale aligns closely with White House talking points, and he recently faced criticism from fellow journalists after he said he would be reluctant to authorize use of the word “lie” to describe false statements made by Trump.

Plus, the Journal is owned by Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch, making it an easy target for accusations that it is too soft on the new president.

Within 24 hours, Baker clarified his position with another memo to staff.

It began like this: “Given some media reports concerning some editing-related emails I sent last night, let me make a few points about our continuing coverage of President Trump’s executive order on travel to the U.S. There is no ban on the phrase ‘Muslim-majority country.’ ”

In a vacuum, Baker’s first directive seemed consistent with his previous view that news outlets generally should not purport to know Trump’s — or anyone’s — intent.

On NBC’s Meet the Press this month, Baker explained his discomfort with the word “lie” by saying that journalists “start ascribing a moral intent” when they use it.

It is often hard to know for sure whether a person who made a false statement intended to be deceptive or was simply wrong, which is why the press has traditionally avoided the L-word.

While it is factually accurate to describe the countries covered by Trump’s travel ban as “majority-Muslim,” the selection of that particular fact does suggest that Trump intended to target Muslims.

That is presumably why Baker called the term “loaded.”

Essentially, Baker doesn’t like the idea of his reporters trying to guess what is in Trump’s head — whether the president intended to deceive or intended to go after Muslims.

However, after his appearance on Meet the Press, Baker wrote that “if we are to use the term ‘lie’ in our reporting, then we have to be confident about the subject’s state of knowledge and his moral intent. I can see circumstances where we might. I’m reluctant to use the term, not implacably against it.”

In the case of “majority-Muslim,” journalists don’t have to guess what’s in Trump’s head.

Trump’s original proposal, made during the campaign, was a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”