I don't care about Brangelina. I really don't. But I do care about how the birth of La Jolie-Pitt is reported, so MSNBC is on my bad list (in fairness I must add that it has never been on my particularly good list, either).
Still, in the same short piece, this
"Jolie has two adopted children: toddler Zahara, from Ethiopia, and 4-year-old Maddox, from Cambodia. Both had their surnames legally changed to Jolie-Pitt after Pitt announced his intentions to co-adopt the children"
is followed by this
"Pitt and Jolie have largely kept out of sight along with her two adopted children, Maddox, 4, and Zahara, 16 months"
a few paragraphs later.
The first passage is fine with me, though wouldn't be fine with some: Jolie did, in fact, previously adopt two children (and this would be the preferred language, with "adopt" as verb). Pitt did file paperwork to share parental rights. But the second passage? Now that they have been adopted, they are now her children, not her adopted children, and this is the second time the same piece used adopted as an adjective. I. is my daughter through the act of adoption, not my adopted daughter. Let's hope very hard that in the Jolie-Pitt (ewwww) family, the same goes.
Why does it matter to me? Well, why does it matter so much to them (the Entertainment section) that they should have to say it (wrong) twice?
Editted to add -
They editted it: "the weeks leading up to the birth of their first child." I don't mean to nitpick, I really don't, but come on!, as GOB would say.
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2 comments:
I can understand your anger. I've come to realize that even in the world of media and communication, words are misused often. First of all anything to do with entertainment "news" rarely has anything to do with ethics or integrity or value. You should write a letter to the editor to educate them- sometimes it is worth giving the writer a "different perspective".
And yes MSN-anything sucks. Seriously- I am not a great writer, and I was allowed to write for tv news-- J. Shaf- would die if he knew!!
It rubs me the wrong way when the media, and people in general, feel the need to differentiate a child by calling them an "adopted" child. We don't differentiate by saying, "their vaginally birthed child" do we?
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