Cussing in News Posts

[AjStone]

Good morning.

I am an avid Android user and read Android Central multiple times daily anticipating new and interesting stories.

I am a white American male of age 28 and I have no problem with foul language in daily conversation where I know the company around me has no issue either. However, I am frankly disgusted with the writers of Android Central using inappropriate language in news titles and posts. Jerry Hildenbrand, this means you. There is no language warning when you browse to this site, and I hardly think any content filter would tag this site as inappropriate for young readers. There is no reason whatsoever to use offensive language when writing news articles. It is simply poor journalism.

I hope my concerns are heard. Thank you for your time.

 

[Phil Nickinson]

Hi there. I'm Phil. I run this place. Let's not give Jerry a hard time for something that's my responsibility.

We published more than 2 million words in 2012. I'm willing to bet 99.5 percent of them were clean. So let's keep things in perspective here. I keep my own kids from reading the other 0.5 percent, just as I don't use such language around them.

But we certainly appreciated the feedback, and thanks for reading!

 

[sledge007]

I must say I was surprised to see that as well. It doesn't bother me per se, but one would think rules are rules.

Sent from my SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums

 

[MobileMadness002]

Hi there. I'm Phil. I run this place. Let's not give Jerry a hard time for something that's my responsibility.

We published more than 2 million words in 2012. I'm willing to bet 99.5 percent of them were clean. So let's keep things in perspective here. I keep my own kids from reading the other 0.5 percent, just as I don't use such language around them.

But we certainly appreciated the feedback, and thanks for reading!

Keep things in perspective? Speak with your CrackBerry counterparts and implement the filter they have in place. As this is a mobile nations forum visited by both young and old alike I would figure that something such as a word filter would have been in place long ago.

News articles should be scrutinized more closely for professionalism, imho.

 

[Phil Nickinson]

Ohhhhhhhh. You guys mean the filter in the forums. That's different than what I consider a news post.

 

[jean15paul]

My two cents.

Regarding "journalism" and "professionalism". IMO, the rules are different between a blog (like this site) and a news outlet (like CNN, USA Today, etc).

This site isn't what I'd call journalism. I don't mean that in a negative way. But things like the contributors expressing their personal opinions and preferences remove the label of journalism. If we want to impose journalistic integrety on this site then they can't express personal opinions, they can't report on unconfirmed rumors, every article must be balances between both sides of the issue.

That's not what we have here. It's a blog (... about phones no less). To me that makes the above list of things ok, along with showing personality and having fun. For many people that may include a reasonable level of profanity. I've yet to see anything on the site that is any worse than U.S. primetime TV, and to me that's a resonable comparision because it reflects what we as a society have deemed generally acceptable. That doesn't mean that all of it is appropriate for my 6-year old, but neither is Family Guy.