Journalistic Tourette's Award
In brief, I've decided to give a Journalistic Tourette's Award for disservices to international understanding to the New York Times for their largely positive article about Hungary and Budapest: Budapest Is Stealing Some of Prague?s Spotlight.
It is a pretty impressive feat that only skilled journalists seem to fully master - to both complement and insult in the same sentence. And it is a classic case of Journalistic Tourette's. Within only the first sentence the writer fell back on that old staple of mentioning 'goulash'. Well congrats, you have really earned your award.
Other cliches he could have pulled from the bag would be such classics as:
- Goulash
- Budapest, a tale of two cities (it was three towns).
- Horse riding
- Attila
- Gypsies
- Pronouncing 'Budapest' as 'Boo-da-peshd' whilst not knowing a single word of Hungarian
- Rubik
- Paris of the East
- Pearl of the Danube
- Biro
- Being hungry - ha, getit, hilarious!
- Revolving doors
- Communist block
All I'm asking for is a level playing field. I can understand why journalists use these cliches as a touchstone for their readers, they think that's what they think when they think of Hungary, if they think of it at all.
Well, here's an idea. Stop second guessing your audience and write your piece. When you get to the end, if it needs it add the cliche seasoning in the final paragraph, just to comfort yourself and your lazy editor. And that way you won't entrench this garbage even further into the collective psyche.
So, your Hungarian word for the day is közhely meaning 'cliche', 'worn-out phrase or expression'. It's just generally useful for denoucing a trite and lazy form of expressing thoughts and ideas.
n.b. Any other cliches I should add to that list?
