Recently I listened to a couple CNN reporters discuss Obama's Saddleback Church presentation. One of them asked the other, was Obama perhaps a bit nuanced? "Nuanced" was then conveniently defined by the reporter as "hard to understand." The reporter's colleague, affirmed that yes, Obama was nuanced.
Though brief and routine, this snippet of reporting was significant. For one thing, it was a clear example of a major news outlet applying partisan spin. This was not a hatchet job, mind you, nor was it elegant and powerful enough to constitute a mailed fist in a velvet glove. It was more like shaking the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag on the candidate from a second-story window.
Most interesting was this: the negative message was stuffed inside a word that normally does not convey censure or adverse judgment. Merriam-Webster Unabridged has a long paragraph of definitions for "nuance," and none of it would a reasonable person view as critical or negative:
Nuance: 1 a : a shade of difference... b : a subtle expressive variation in a musical performance... 2 : a subtle or implicit quality, aspect, or device... 3 : sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings... Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online
Yet the innuendo was there: nuanced thinking or speaking is bad. The reporters were thus replaying and lending their support to a core Republican attack theme: Obama is nuanced--different, strange, not like us, exotic--and therefore not trustworthy and perhaps not competent to run for president.
The reporters took an essentially positive word, and by adding just a shade of innuendo, a subtle negative inference, an implicit judgment of badness, they created a muffled negative message with partisan spin. So, one might conclude that the CNN reporting itself was nuanced, in a dysfunctional way.
Does this represent a conscious, deliberate attempt to manipulate language in a way that subtly favored Conservatives? Is there backroom discussion about how to nuance news to support the Party or candidate most favored by corporate ownership? Do alligators have teeth, and do bears sleep in the woods?
All too often, nuance is the raw material from which propaganda is constructed, and viewers should feel properly outraged when they recognize they are the nuancees.. Personally, I think all journalists employed by national news outlets, including Cable TV, should be required to earn a certificate in nonpartisan news nuancing. Even better, viewers should form a coalition of steamed-up activist, like MADD or MoveOn, to lobby against corporate nuancing of the news.
Or, we could just ignore all corporate culpability, and continue to beat up Obama.