The sinister labels of lazy journalists

THIS WEEK, I discovered that Sir Trevor Chinn is Jewish. I’m being facetious, of course. Sir Trevor is a wellknown member of the community, an enormously successful businessman and a generous benefactor to a number of important causes. He is often to be found within the pages of this newspaper so his Jewishness is not a surprise.

But in a full-page article in the Evening Standard last Friday — in a profile of his friend Lloyd Dorfman — Sir Trevor’s name was used in passing, referred to only as ‘‘the Jewish philanthropist Sir Trevor Chinn’’. Not “successful” philanthropist, or “renowned” or even “generous”. But his religion was, for the writer of the piece, the only adjective required.

Having read the article, I used Twitter to get in touch with the journalist, Jim Armitage, who is the newspaper’s highly regarded city editor. My message ran thus: ‘‘Jim, if someone was a Catholic philanthropist or a Muslim one, would you still use religion to describe them. And, if so, why?’’

At first, he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about but, prodded further, he replied: ‘‘Oh yes, fair point, actually. Don’t know why I put that in, think I just lifted it from his biog. Nothing meant by it.’’

Of course there was nothing meant by it. Nothing ever is.

Just as, a few days earlier, another journalist — this time the Daily Telegraph’s associate editor, Christopher Hope — meant nothing by his use of the word ‘‘Jewish’’ to describe the background of an until-now obscure prime ministerial adviser called Daniel Korski.

Korski’s enthusiasm got him into trouble last week when he was attacked by newspapers for his ‘‘shadowy’’ pro-EU behaviour. He apparently phoned business leader John Longworth to berate him for a speech calling for Brexit, which, it is alleged, led Longworth to be ousted from his role as director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Anyway, as the journalist pointed out, 38-year-old Korski’s parents are Polish, they came to this country many years after the war, having apparently been ‘‘expelled’’ from their country of birth. Why, I don’t know. Hope, however, described them as ‘‘Jewish’’ refugees, for no apparent reason. He didn’t respond to my queries as to what was meant by the word’s use.

The Financial Times media editor Henry Mance did the same thing a couple of weeks ago in a brilliant interview with Alan Yentob, conducted (you guessed it) at the River Café. He dropped the word Jewish into the text to describe Yentob’s parents and then never returned to the subject. Again, I asked him why he used the word as a label. He replied that Yentob had used it himself and that ‘‘there was a bit more about Jewish identity that I cut out for space reasons’’. But he still used the word.

Of course, there was nothing meant by it.

Which seems a rather peculiar piece of reasoning for a journalist, since the very nature of the job is to use words, phrases and observations that add meaning to a person, place or event. If nothing is meant by the use of a word which, we know, many often use in a