The Associated Press has announced that its Stylebook, widely regarded as the standard by which all journalists should write, will be updated to direct reporters to replace the terms "skeptic" and "denier" with "doubter" or "those who reject mainstream climate science." While the latter phrase is accurate, it's doubtful that many reporters will use it due to its length and relative clunkiness—unless perhaps it can be shortened to “rejects."
The move is being lauded by deniers, which should give the AP cause enough to reverse the change. Meanwhile, climate scientists and others are criticizing the move, with Dr. Mann telling Think Progress that the term "doubter" gives "an undeserved air of legitimacy to something that is simply not legitimate."
The AP's justification is that the term "denier" has "the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier." This seems to indicate that they're in denial of the fact that denial is a long-accepted psychological defense mechanism and a term popularized by Sigmund Freud. It's commonly used in describing addicts who refuse treatment and go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging the depth of their addiction and its consequences, or even more tragically, cancer patients who refuse treatment because they deny that they are sick.
Making the AP's decision to avoid "denier" because of its Holocaust connotations is in itself a denial of the many other common meanings of the word.
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