In Newsrooms, Some Immigration Terms Are Going Out Of Style

Journalists make choices all the time that influence our understanding of the news — the choice of what stories to cover, which people to interview, which words to use. And major news organizations have been reconsidering how best to describe a group of people whose very presence in this country breaks immigration law.

News organizations as institutions often decide which terms to use in describing contentious subjects, then codify them in what are called stylebooks. They are subject to change just as society’s views change. Just consider terms used to describe race in this country.

“It goes back to the Garden of Eden,” says former New York Times and Washington Post reporter Roberto Suro. “Naming is the first power that humans got and it’s still the most powerful that the human intellect received from its creator.”