Abbreviation or Mutilation?

In the past, journalism rested on a handful of basic principles, while everything else was shaped by personal effort, reading, and experience. Among those essential principles were accuracy, clarity, and a precise headline.

For example, imagine a news report about a passenger ship sinking in the Indian Ocean. The headline, according to traditional journalistic standards, should read something like: Passenger Ship Sinks off the Coast of Sri Lanka; 70 Dead, 270 Missing. In other words: the ship, its nature, the location of the disaster, the number of victims, and the number of survivors—all clearly presented.

Today’s journalism, however, might publish the same story under a headline such as: The Storm Drowned the Passengers — alongside titles like Who Can Calm Trump? or The Golf Results Were Not What We Expected. Riddles, question marks, exclamation points—may God have mercy on the suspense techniques of Alfred Hitchcock.

Ever since the emergence of modern journalism, I have tried to understand and adapt to it. But what can one do with old habits and the teachings of Francois Akl: clarity, and making it easy for the reader to absorb the news and assess its importance? News is not a crossword puzzle competition, and facts are not meant to be tangled together beyond recognition.

To speak frankly, I find it difficult to adapt to modern journalism. Very difficult. I have neither the time nor the patience for riddles. And in the end, there are no prizes or rewards for deciphering them. Nor do they offer linguistic refinement or cultural enrichment. What is happening instead resembles fragmentation—or perhaps distortion—in the manner of Pablo Picasso: the head where the watermelon should be, the face where the arm belongs, the foot attached to the thigh. May God also have mercy on Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq and his famous linguistic title, Leg Over Leg, Concerning What al-Faryaq Is.

We once complained about the excessive grandiosity of newspaper language because it contradicted the nature of journalism itself. But what is happening today is not simplification—it is dismemberment. It is not abbreviation, but severing. Worse still, even the major mainstream newspapers are surrendering to this trend of “modernization.” And eventually, they may train even healthy readers to grow accustomed to error.

Originally published in Asharq Al-Awsat