Paul Graham is entitled to his opinion. I am a professional journalist and I disagree.

Journalists use the word "embattled" the way Merriam-Webster defines it: "characterized by conflict or controversy."

Typically it applies to a person who has been heavily criticized, or accused of wrongdoing at length or by many people.

Accurately describing a person as such is not at all the same as the journalist declaring a person guilty, and it's certainly not a "press code word."

He is seeing bias that isn't there.

I think PG is getting at a larger point, which I heavily agree with, that journalists very often use words that imply a lot of "story" that is not supported by "facts". For example, I just went on to the NYTimes Economy section right now, and the second article says "Short of Workers, US Farmers Crave More Immigrants". Crave? Really? Cable news is horrendous about this. They do stuff all the time that's like, "Senator XYZ blasts Trump". Blasts? And that's just headlines. But you see it all the time in subtle lines throughout an article, such as, "Facebook's employees have been raising a stir". Or like, "The new law is leaving homeowners in a lurch". These words have no quantifiable meaning, and typically it seems journalists pick words that have more average "emotional valence" than other words, even if the facts don't quite support that level of emotional valence. And that honestly is the part that annoys me the most about normal journalism.

> I think PG is getting at a larger point, which I heavily agree with, that journalists very often use words that imply a lot of "story" that is not supported by "facts".

And he illustrates this larger point with specific claims that are, themselves, unsupported by facts and constructed around the narrative he is trying to push.

I agree, but dramatic presentation is what gets attention. A dry recitation of the facts performs poorly in the marketplace.

You're not engaging with the actual criticism at all. Nobody is disputing that "embattled" is in the dictionary; instead, he's saying that it's journalism jargon that is not actually used in real life.

No, no, no. pg is claiming that "embattled" is a journalistic euphemism for "guilty as charged". Sure, it's jargon and rarely used in "real life", but it's generally not inaccurate or deliberately misleading.

Someone who is accused yet innocent is still "embattled". Readers assuming guilt is not a problem of fact. It may not even be the journalistic intent.

For that matter, embattled is often used in a context where there's no crime at all involved. A CEO may be embattled because he hasn't been able to turn a company around and the shareholders and board are being restless. In that case, in a sense it's code for on the way out, but only because by the time you get to that point, the handwriting is probably on the wall.

I tried the word "embattled" in Google News. One of the articles that came up was about an embattled tree. Which I'm sure is every bit as guilty as the media suggests.

That, at least, is a response to the actual argument. I disagree: I have never seen a story where "embattled" was used to describe someone the rest of the story led you to believe might be unfairly embattled, and the nice thing about "embattled" is that you do not have to actually prove anything to use it. It's just "I hear lots of people are saying..." dressed up.

PG is blaming journalists for what is certainly an anecdotal interpretation of the word. There's no reason for anyone who knows the meaning of the word "embattled" to believe it's castigating.

The thrust of PG's claim was that journalists use the term as a synonym for "guilty" and in response, a journalist has argued that they actually use it in line with the dictionary definition of "characterised by conflict or controversy". A bit rich to accuse other people of "not engaging with actual criticism" when your reading comprehension falls that far short...

In my experience, journalists use it mostly for people who are likely to be fired shortly, many of whom are not "guilty" of anything other than being in a position of responsibility in an organization, department or team that is perceived as underperforming or being taken over by critics.

I actually would find embattled a bit of an unusual word choice for someone on trial for a crime outside of a broader context. If someone's arrested for murder, we'd call them a suspected murderer or alleged murderer, not someone embattled.

As you say, I associate embattled more with, say, an executive caught up in a scandal or who is likely to be dismissed for poor performance.

"alleged" or "suspected" is actually perhaps a better example of the sort of not-always-correctly-interpreted-by-the-readership journalistic phrase PG intended to highlight, since "alleged" can both mean "this person is [probably going to be] on trial for this offence, so because it's so serious we're respecting the legal process by not asserting they did it even though there's substantial or even blindingly obvious proof" or "we're just reporting something someone once claimed and because it's so open to dispute we have no desire to get sued by making the claim our own"

It would be interesting to add a journo jargon extension to this website so you can understand what certain phrases could be referring to. Kind of like "a stranger"

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1111683961447567360

You'll notice that on this platform every proven fact is annotated. As a result, proven statements stand out from unproven statements. This forces the writer to be upfront about which assertions are proven, and which are speculation/opinion.

Well, yeah. And "fact checking" won't fix that.

Interesting you mention libel. Libel law, of course, is a tremendous motivation to not posting actual lies in journalism. And courts are more flexible than "fact checking".