Over in GetReligion there's an interesting discussion of the Washington Post's use of "scare quotes." Here is an excerpt--to read the original blogpost, click here.
Scare quotes scare me
Posted by Mollie
The Washington Post covered a new Bush administration rule that protects the conscience rights of health care workers. Or, as the Washington Post scare quotes it, “right of conscience.”
We get the scare quotes in the headline and again in the second paragraph:
The Bush administration today issued a sweeping new regulation that protects a broad range of health-care workers — from doctors to janitors — who refuse to participate in providing services that they believe violate their personal, moral or religious beliefs.
The controversial rule empowers federal health officials to cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, clinic, health plan, doctor’s office or other entity if it does not accommodate employees who exercise their “right of conscience.” It would apply to more than 584,000 health-care facilities.
Are the words “they believe” in the first paragraph necessary? Obviously if they didn’t believe these beliefs, they wouldn’t be, well, their beliefs. Right? And the regulation isn’t sweeping, as the story goes on to note in great detail.
Anyway, it’s not like conscience rights are previously unheard of or were just invented by Mike Leavitt, the Health and Human Services Secretary behind the ruling. So I really don’t get the scare quotes. One of my best friend’s parents met because her father served as a conscientious objector during Vietnam at a hospital where her mother was interning. Does the Washington Post refer to such Mennonites as “conscientious objectors” or just conscientious objectors? No scare quotes in this 2006 story. Why the difference? Is it one thing to have a conscientious objection to war and another to have a conscientious objection to abortion?
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