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Attacking the organization that posted the opinion piece for being Arabic while ignoring the author is an experienced american journalist? I'm pretty sure there

Attacking the organization that posted the opinion piece for being Arabic while ignoring the author is an experienced american journalist? I'm pretty sure there are a couple of logical fallacies there... -- Dan Froomkin @froomkin Dan Froomkin is launching the Center for Accountability Journalism, at FearlessMedia.org. He has worked as senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post, as White House Watch columnist for the Washington Post; and as editor of the Washington Post website. Email him at froomkin@gmail.com. EDIT: Arab, not Arabic. I apologize for the confusion.

DrJokepu 13y ago
Minor (and off-topic) nitpick: An organization, a person, etc. is Arab, not Arabic. But Arab people often speak Arabic, which means the language.
- rjtavares 13y ago
  Thanks for the correction! I'm not a native speaker, and there is no such difference in my language.
- icambron 13y ago
  Counter-nitpick: A newspaper can be Arabic in that it's chiefly in Arabic; i.e. Arabic is also an adjective for describing things relating to the language. "Arab" is an ethnicity and an adjectival and demonym for a region. Arabic publications may or may not be Arab, and vice-versa. But a newspaper can certainly be Arabic. Some of the confusion might be that we rarely use "English" to describe things that are in English when it might be ambiguous whether we mean the language or the place/people. So we say "English-language newspaper" to mean something different than "a newspaper published in England". But with Arab/Arabic, we have two words, so it's not a problem. Of course, Al Jazeera is also Arab (in the region sense, not necessarily the ethnic sense-- different ambiguity); I'm just saying that to the extent that it's in Arabic, it can be called Arabic. I should note that I'm not actually an expert in any of the relevant fields here and I'd love to hear someone take that apart.

DrJokepu 13y ago

Minor (and off-topic) nitpick: An organization, a person, etc. is Arab, not Arabic. But Arab people often speak Arabic, which means the language.

rjtavares 13y ago
Thanks for the correction! I'm not a native speaker, and there is no such difference in my language.
icambron 13y ago
Counter-nitpick: A newspaper can be Arabic in that it's chiefly in Arabic; i.e. Arabic is also an adjective for describing things relating to the language. "Arab" is an ethnicity and an adjectival and demonym for a region. Arabic publications may or may not be Arab, and vice-versa. But a newspaper can certainly be Arabic. Some of the confusion might be that we rarely use "English" to describe things that are in English when it might be ambiguous whether we mean the language or the place/people. So we say "English-language newspaper" to mean something different than "a newspaper published in England". But with Arab/Arabic, we have two words, so it's not a problem. Of course, Al Jazeera is also Arab (in the region sense, not necessarily the ethnic sense-- different ambiguity); I'm just saying that to the extent that it's in Arabic, it can be called Arabic. I should note that I'm not actually an expert in any of the relevant fields here and I'd love to hear someone take that apart.