New Media Can't Afford to Think Talk is Cheap

Newsmakers and their media enablers may or may not have valid ideas to express to the American audience, but the more obvious problem is their occasional failure to express those ideas civilly.

One of our crucial democratic norms—authentic, informed public discourse confronting issues sensibly and peacefully—often gets sidetracked by gratuitous vulgarity.

Most of us occasionally blurt a toxic or taboo remark. But open-to-the-public profanity seems to have increased among journalists, politicians, and news consumers at a time when cooler heads should prevail over our cultural coarseness.

People will offer many excuses for their loose lips—perhaps their emotional state or their state of mind, or the seriousness or triviality of what they’re discussing. They may sprinkle their words like spices or spew them like projectiles.

The trend is magnified by the algorithmic argumentation pouring through the social-media firehose and by the engagement or enragement driving “new-media” podcasts and short-form videos. Everyone’s competing for space in our “attention economy.”

New media make complex demands on us—emotional intelligence alongside intellectual heft, empathy alongside sure-footed argumentation, and clear expression of our hearts and minds alongside responsive listening to others. This can nudge society toward better discourse. When it doesn’t, when communication is cheapened, the fault is not in our screens, but in ourselves.

Recently, prominent opponents of President Trump coordinated online video attacks against his inflation-reduction promise, calling it “sh*t that ain’t true,” and his immigrant deportation policy, calling it “total bullsh*t.” One news commentator said of the phraseology, “I find it very unpersuasive and undignified.”

On the Feb. 16 edition of the Fox News “MediaBuzz” program, host Howard Kurtz played a clip from a CNN broadcast in which a top-tier anchor, interviewing former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, spontaneously uttered a vulgar insult.

“Don’t be a d***,” the CNN anchor said as part of the discussion. He later apologized to Sununu, who brushed it off kind-heartedly.

But Kurtz brought up the incident in a follow-up segment.

“I’m noticing there is a new trend in cable news, at least on some channels, where cursing is cool, dropping F-bombs is cool,” Kurtz said.

He recalled that a congresswoman had recently tossed the bomb at Trump. The president likes his words cleaner but meaner.

Kurtz said of vulgarity in media, “Maybe I’m ridiculously old-fashioned, but I think it shows a lack of class.” His colleague, while forgiving the slip-up on CNN, agreed that embracing the profane “as a way to get eyeballs” contributes to “defining decency down.”

More than a year ago, The Wall Street Journal cited a study illustrating the problem. A content-filtering firm that monitors TV shows had surveyed vocabulary found in news and entertainment programs between 1985 and November 2023.

There were overall declines in foul language during the Covid pandemic and the Hollywood writers’ strike, the company found, but eruptions of the F-word rose from 511 to 22,177 over the period. The S-word jumped from 484 four decades ago to the latest total of 10,864.

Such disparagements and expletives seem especially common today in content aimed at younger generations and others who aren’t reliable news-addicts.

Researchers say youths do tend to “swear” more. Their lingo is hardly a symptom of lower intelligence or lack of virtue. It partly reflects an “anything goes” environment which promotes impulsive reactions or self-centered tactics to “stand out” or “fit in.”

Oddly, content creators often bleep out offensive words not because a diligent editor caught a speaker’s wayward violation, but because profanities and bleeps, purposely interwoven in planned scripts, sound witty or risqué. They make protagonists look like “part of the gang.”

Communicators in all lines of work need to rethink this approach. Words matter as precision instruments—sometimes when we least expect or want it. While not becoming prudish or aggressively woke, our default when interacting online, or on the street, should be a forbearance that preserves conversation as a civic cornerstone.

Remember that, for average folks, the audience we want to reach is already close to us—in families, friends, communities, and microcosms of the public square at the local and state levels.

Smaller-scale communities have a growing stake in disputes about issues of immigration, education, abortion, and criminal justice, which many came to consider “national news.” When people meet face-to-face with their neighbors to resolve concrete problems, we need higher standards of self-regulation and propriety.

If we are fortunate to participate in conversations that gain traction, making fuller use of America’s free marketplace of ideas, we should be ready to state our case. But also beware of ideologically motivated agitators who want to lay landmines in that market.

When we’re not being divided according to characteristics like race and sex, or by our opinions, we face partitioning by class and wealth. These polarize us, but at least we’re using words.

We now must resist a trend toward dumbed-down battles over rhetoric itself. Some ventures into raw reality are attacked less in terms of “define what’s true!” and more in terms of “you offend me, talk to the hand.” The old Groucho Marx song says it all—"whatever it is, I’m against it.”

As seen in the partisan “silent treatment” given to President Trump’s address to Congress on March 4, modern word-fare can take the form of simply refusing to converse or acknowledge remarks, even when some insights deserve general agreement.

We also saw a symbolic excommunication from communication in 2020 when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up her text of Trump’s State of the Union speech. Games of disconnection are played across the political spectrum; Trump refused to debate his fellow candidates for the Republican nomination in 2024.

The democratization now glimpsed in the new media pushes back against disconnection by celebrating conversation. It forsakes scripted or performative approaches to rhetoric. Podcasting nurtures dialogues of all sorts, of any length, shallow or in-depth, so long as the talk is spontaneous and authentic.

Recall that many observers last year criticized presidential candidate Kamala Harris for “not going on Joe Rogan” to leverage his format of three-hour, candid, casual chats where any topic is legitimate.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has launched his “This Is Gavin Newsom” podcast, promising honest encounters with political opponents.

Optimists believe the new-media trend can re-energize the art of dialogue, add more diverse voices to the public square, and boost democratic instincts nationally and locally. We can explore “inconvenient truths” on a level playing field.

There’s even hope that formats like discussion-based podcasts can inject more transparency into truth-seeking, with no teleprompters (or artificial intelligence) to manufacture talking points. Public intellectual Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, has opined, “You can’t lie effectively [and] spontaneously in a conversation.”

Are we ready for this renaissance of debate?

Ironically, we have come to rely on our digital screens, whereby we conduct much of our business in isolation, shunning lengthy conversations. This lifestyle has made many folks prefer pressing the buttons on their devices; they avoid awkward talk that might press people’s buttons, or their own.

If we don’t reboot our skills for everyday discourse, we really do risk causing offense with words interpreted as impatient, disdainful, or unworthy of response.

There’s at least one step we can take to ensure win-win experiences when we gather to explore and improve reality together: Minimize the use of vulgarity to distract and cheapen everyone’s thoughts.

Media critic Kurtz may be right about being old-fashioned, but we should heed his implication that an excess of taboo remarks—a careless “lack of class”—will define decency down and further disable the public square.\

Therefore, it behooves us to reflect more deeply on what we’re saying and how we can say it better. A vocabulary exists for achieving greater clarity on how to perform in our rhetorical dramas, although there’s a lot of subjectivity and overlap in the definitions.

We’ve been using terms like “vulgarity” and “taboo remarks.” Let’s expand this lexicon to better examine our consciences, or at least examine others’:

• Vulgarity. This refers to “the common people” and recalls the Latin Vulgate, a “commonly used” Bible in the early Church. According to a Mental Floss essay, vulgarity is a general word for crude language. It sometimes describes “the act of substituting a coarse word in a context where a more refined expression would be expected.”

• Profanity. This is the use of words which have inherent clout based on intensely negative experiences. In more religious eras, a contrast was drawn between the “sacred” and the “profane.” A Discover magazine article reports that Americans noticed “profanity” had spread among troops returning from the hell of the first and second world wars. They fell into the habit of emotional words whose ugliness echoed those horrors.

• Slurs. These are harmful insults based on sex, race, and religion, says Discover. Research shows that, particularly when slurs are used around children, they psychologically affect those being defamed, or anyone who absorbs the malice. The words can sink to the level of verbal abuse.

• Cursing. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines this as “calling down evil upon God or creatures,” as in wishing someone’s damnation. “Cussing” expands to include profanities which are “hurtful, blasphemous, vulgar, wicked, and uncouth.” The Bible says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying … that it may impart grace.” (Ephesians 4:29)

• Swearing. This applies to using God’s name in vain, as in violating a sworn oath. The action viscerally connects God to evil. According to an essay in The Conversation, neuroscience suggests swearing resides in a part of the brain different from other speech regions; it may be linked to the “flight or fright” reflex. Swearing may coincide with a rapid heartbeat and sweating, either providing a form of catharsis or expanding the presence of evil. Swear words in general can serve to command attention—but beware because they also “can sometimes get in the way of thinking.”

• Obscenity. This is the use of explicit, immoral, or titillating expressions not tied to the spiritual realm. But there is a connection to American law, especially applied to whole texts or messages. According to a Mental Floss essay, material is obscene—and not protected by the First Amendment—if it fits three descriptions: The average person would find that it appeals to prurient interest; it depicts sexual content or excretory functions in a patently offensive way; and the work as a whole lacks serious artistic, political, or scientific value.

The substantial vocabulary loosely describing vulgarity constitutes neither a glossary nor a checklist to keep our conversations “clean.”

But we should note that parts of the vocabulary are rooted in religious and spiritual concerns. They show the weight traditionally given to communication, especially about God’s role in meaningful things—in private, personal things. Communication sometimes borders on mystery, so tread lightly.

We’re well-advised to develop an appreciation for the transcendent importance of words so we can form the instincts we need for effective, respectful outreach.

The role of instinct recalls the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Justice Potter Stewart famously described his threshold test for pornography. Stewart declined to provide a “shorthand description,” but he wrote, “I know it when I see it.”

This suffices to make the point that newsmakers and news-shapers (that’s most of us, thanks to our phones) should carefully ponder what it means to speak civilly and use language well.

If we hope that, in our age of new media, conditions will evolve to make the public square more dynamic and inclusive, we must help to fulfill the promise of authentic and unsullied conversations. We’re all responsible for good stewardship of society’s words and wisdom.

Our culture’s current confusion about truth is both a cause and effect of today’s coarse talk. Polls showing widespread concern about the future of democracy impose many tasks on us, but one of them—instinctively choosing language that dignifies communities as they speak and listen—is within our grasp.

These responsibilities literally comprise more than we can say. When might we expect our improved presentations of spontaneity and self-control to bear fruit? We’ll know it when we see it.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

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