More Lakoff

Funnily enough, it's almost exactly a year since I first wrote about George Lakoff in my (pre-blog) journal. The Friday, July 23 edition of NOW – With Bill Moyers had an excellent piece on language in politics – including an interview with Lakoff, who was arguing, more than three months prior to the election, that the Republicans had already clearly won the battle of framing public issues with terms such as “tax relief”, "clear skies", “common sense forest management” etc. – plus of course classics such as “death tax” and “pro-life”. (Lakoff's Berkeley web page is here).

That “NOW” edition - which lasted a whole hour a year ago, before Tomlinson got to it - also had an excellent segment on local TV news and its failure to cover politics and public affairs properly. As David Brancaccio made clear: If voters were "relying on local television news to help them make decisions in this important election year, recent studies show that they may be left in the dark. By some estimates, more than half of local news broadcasts may not cover politics at all in the weeks before the election, and important local races and issues are often completely ignored. In a nation where the public owns the airwaves, are local stations driving corporate profits at the expense of the communities they are supposed to serve? Absolutely!"