Anikó Fázsy on the uncontrolled language of the media

The deportation of Eastern European Roma from France is not only a social and moral problem, but also a problem of semantics. In liberal democracy many terms have lost their value, writes Anikó Fázsy, chief editor of the literary magazine Nagyvilág, in the weekly supplement of conservative newspaper Magyar Nemzet: "The permanent flow of words from the media and their verbal aggression are making people insensitive and indifferent: in order to get people's attention they continually use bombastic language and exaggerations. Emotions are worked up by their fabrication of war-like circumstances. The language gets out of control as a result of the constant exaggerations. The goal is no longer to create understanding, but judgement. Phenomena are labelled for the sake of easy orientation. And analogies are drawn between phenomena which are in no way comparable. The world is truly difficult to understand. But it is a sign of mental laziness, if not malice, to explain reality with a single noun, a single adjective."

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