With a referendum on whether the UK should stay in Europe in the offing, maybe it is time for the Guardian to mind its language. For a start, is that first sentence an accurate reflection of what is going to happen?
Not in the opinion of one reader, who complained about the headline on an opinion piece that said the anaemic launch of the campaign to remain in the EU should “alarm pro-Europeans”. He wrote: “Please stop telling people that they are pro- and anti-European when there is no connection whatsoever between a country’s membership status vis-a-vis the European Union and their position vis-a-vis Europe and/or being European and their country’s location on the globe.
“Your longstanding persistence in asserting this false equivalence does you no favours at all. It presents the face of either shoddy journalism or deliberate manipulation of ‘memes’ … you bring upon yourself the accusation of propagandising on behalf of the EU, the Conservative party, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrat party.”
I responded – on reflection, a little brusquely – by saying that “It is a perfectly reasonable headline convention to summarise the EU as Europe”. It would have been better to say that it is part of a journalist’s shorthand to use the word Europe in this way; a journalistic convention that we believe readers understand and is acceptable to them.
However, I think the complainant’s email brings us on to a further interesting point about an area where there has been confusion in the Guardian’s pages – the institutions of Europe. Here is a typical correction published on 9 September 2014: “Nils Muižnieks was described as the EU’s commissioner for human rights in an article about the passage of an anti-discrimination bill through the Greek parliament. He holds that post for the Council of Europe, which is not part of the EU, but a separate organisation with a wider membership (Greek laws ‘fall short’ as hate attacks surge, 8 September, page 17).”
And another from the year before: “Once again we have shown that we don’t know as much about Europe as we should. A headline (May warns UK may pull out of EU convention to ‘fix human rights laws’, 1 October, page 10) is wrong. As a reader points out: ‘The European convention on human rights and the European court of human rights are not part of the European Union. The European convention on human rights was signed on 4 November 1950, years before the creation of the European Community. It is not an EU treaty. The European court of human rights was established under the convention. It is not an EU body.’”
There are 28 countries in the EU, some of which are not part of continental Europe; and there are, of course, some countries in Europe that are not in the EU, such as Switzerland. The EU is a political and economic body, while the Council of Europe is “an international organisation in Strasbourg which comprises 47 countries of Europe. It was set up to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe”, as it says on its website.
There are a number of handy references in the Guardian’s style guide to keep journalists focused. For instance:
• Council of Europe – not an EU institution so not to be confused with the European council, which is
• EU – European Union (no need to spell out at first mention); formerly EC (European Community); before that EEC (European Economic Community)
• EU presidents – There are three, so don’t say “EU president” or “president of the union” without making clear which you mean: president of the European commission, president of the European parliament, or holder of the rotating presidency (technically “president in office of the council of the European Union”), which rotates among the member states every six months
While we haven’t seen evidence of widescale confusion among readers about the difference between Europe and the EU – certainly not in our inbox – as the passion that will undoubtedly accompany the referendum builds, journalists should reacquaint themselves with the style guide. And I am grateful to the reader who complained for the prod in the right direction.
