Source: http://ift.tt/1ih0JpN --- Sunday, October 08, 2017
There were a tense few hours in Kingsport on Wednesday when a “process upset” at Tennessee Eastman Co. rattled Windows for miles around and sent plant workers and neighbors scurrying to safe zones. You are probably asking: “What is a process upset?” Well, that my friends without an engineering degree, is what folks at Eastman call something that goes KA-BOOM! and leaves a visible plume. We laymen would just call it an explosion. Thankfully, no one was injured in this process upset, but one Eastman employee told the Kingsport Times-News that the blast “ripped part of the building off.” He also said the incident was “very, very loud” and “scary.” No doubt it was, but those are not the details a company would include in a news statement. Reassuring the public that no harm will come to them is the key job of a spokesperson in such cases. The use of the term “process upset” got me thinking of all the acronyms, political jargon, euphemisms and code words we hear every day. Journalists are some of the worst offenders in this regard, especially those who labor in broadcast. How many times have you heard a TV talking head say they had “reached out to” so and so for a comment on a story? Whatever happened to just saying you had “called,” “contacted” or even “emailed” a source for a response? Some consultant somewhere told some TV news director at some time that “reaching out” is preferable because it sounded more personal and less threate ...
from Windows http://ift.tt/2wFePgE
No comments:
Post a Comment