I have been looking forward and dreading this day for a little while now. I was more than certain to move on from my undergraduate life at Stevens and into the next stage– but I had no idea it would involve me moving back up north to Canada. I was never sure how to make such a decision and how much I would debate it from the moment I know that I might have the opportunity. Slowly but surely, more and more people I know have begun to find out about the next chapter in my life that I have decided to accept employment in the great city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. It wasn’t my first choice but in the end, it was my best choice because of where I wanted to progress professionally.

The last decade that I have spent in the Garden State has been something remarkable. I was never a big fan of moving down here in the middle of 7^th grade but I have since grown fond of this place. I may not have always liked the political decisions made here, their sports teams or even their lack of Mars chocolate bars, but the people were a different story… and seriously, why aren’t there Mars chocolate bars here?

Dating back to 2001, I decided to go to the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies (MCASMET) for high school which was only in its second year of existence when I first started. I like to think, that along with several people from our class, I had some sort of influence in the way things developed in that school. This is the place where I learned to question facts and not take them at face value. This is a place where I learned to be disciplined while debating with a classmate who was fundamentally incorrect. However, this is also the place where I got into trouble for not being “patriotic” enough during my freshman year but this is also a place where I made a best friend who I rarely go the stretch of a full day without making contact of some sort.

Here is an excellent piece by Robert Fisk on how journalism can sometimes lose the actual context of the story and be very easily shaped by selective choice of words in the reporting. Do this piece by Fisk justice and read all of it – don’t skip around, it really builds well and the examples he has cited in this speech are simply brilliant.

You can click the title of the quoted piece below for the original source from Al Jazeera English or just read it below:

Journalism and ‘the words of power’ by Robert Fisk

Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words – and the use of words.

It is about semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’  our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean.

For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

There are a vast number of public policy issues that arise when policymakers discuss items such as a budget in order to make the best decision not only for the individuals in the community but to improve the society as a whole. Although each issue provides its unique aspect on what impact it plays to improve the lifestyle, it also brings differences not only its regulations but also in unintended consequences. The two categories compared in this analysis are the economic and budget issues as well educational policies including pre- and post-secondary education and what impact one plays upon the other.

Education policies, since the start of the country’s founding, have done well to maintain the basic goals of the American nation. Although for the most of the reasoning behind public education was morally justified, there are signs of political motivation behind an educated public as well. Since its early stages have sustained the firm belief of Thomas Jefferson that the only way the American democratic process could have active, engaged voters would be if they had the ability to read, write and were educated enough to understand the issues they were voting for. He also argued that different forms of learning eased the process of large immigrations assimilate into their communities more fluently. Finally, education paves the way for the worker to be able to find jobs which raise not only their economic, but social status as well.

I just read this comment on a thread on Reddit and it does deliver a power lesson albeit in a rather disturbing way. Take a quick look and read the following quoted section and let me know what you think.

Junior high was OK for me. As a good student, yearbook staff member, and band nerd, I was well liked by the faculty and minimally harassed by fellow students. Skip to social studies with Mr. R. He started class one day by explaining to us that he had gone over test scores, homework, etc. and determined why our class average was so low. Quietly and determinedly, he announced that I and another boy were to blame… for everything. Then he calmly explained to the class why we were so stupid. I was so shocked. I remember staring down at my desk and crying silently while he proceeded to humiliate me and the other boy in front of the entire class. Then he told me to pick up my desk and move it to the back of the room, facing the wall. He barked at me again to move it when I squeaked out, “seriously?” So the other boy and I silently moved our desks to the back. The harassment continued. The other boy was crying, and I think I was near passing out from embarrassment and confusion – I had aced our last test. The class was incredibly quiet. My friends gave me pity looks or avoided eye contact, and one girl actually started to laugh out loud at me. We sat like that for half the class. Then Mr. R stopped his lecture and asked why nobody had stood up for us. When he got no reply, he said, “Well, this is what Hitler essentially did to the Jews. And none of you said anything to stop me from humiliating your classmates. Interesting.” My student/teacher relationship with Mr. R never fully recovered, even after he apologized.

Glenn Beck plays “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with environment, ACORN, TARP, the word ‘empathy’, National Endowments for the Arts, and even the Peace Corps … except there’s just one degree and Kevin Bacon is Adolf Hitler.

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