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Fellow journalists far and wide, I implore you--IMPLORE YOU--to stop calling the Unite the Right rally and related events of August 11 and 12, 2017 "Charlottesville." It's lazy, it's harmful, and it's inaccurate. THREAD 1/
Charlottesville is a real place, where real people live real lives. Charlottesville is not an event. Surely you can spare some of your word count for accuracy's sake and call it "Unite the Right" (don't forget the torch-lit rally if you mean August 11, too). 2/
When you say "Charlottesville" but really mean "Unite the Right," you absolve the organizers and participants of that rally (yes, some of whom live/lived in this community, true) of the responsibility they bear for what they did that weekend, 3/
and instead transfer responsibility on to an entire community of people who suffered, and continue to suffer, in a variety of ways, as a result of the perpetrators' (white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis) actions. 4/
"Charlottesville" is not shorthand for "Unite the Right." (They are the same number of characters, including spaces, so, no excuse.) This place and its people, like everywhere in the U.S., is far from perfect. We are perhaps a microcosm of U.S. history, U.S. present. 5/
So, journalists, please, PLEASE, use your words to hold perpetrators accountable rather than to reduce an entire community of people to a single word out of convenience. Readers adopt this language when they see you use it. That's how we got here. 6/
Please call it what it is: Unite the Right. Words matter. We as journalists should know this. 7/ end
Also, props to fellow journalist @sabrinaamorenoo for thoughtfully asking about this this morning and encouraging me to share my thoughts on it.
