Since Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, gleeful headlines have sprouted across the media, with a new descriptor for the former president: “felon.”
The New York Times editorial board condemned him under the pithy banner: “Donald Trump, Felon.”
The Washington Post ran an analysis by senior political reporter Aaron Blake headlined: “Trump is a felon. Here’s why that could matter in the 2024 race.”
Even the New York Post, which ran a sympathetic one-liner on its front page, “Injustice,” included a subhead calling him the “first felon president.”
Trump has delayed and avoided judicial proceedings for much of his career. Surely part of the impetus behind the sudden widespread use of the word “felon” is to take Trump down a peg, to label him as no better than a common criminal. And that is the problem.
Most people in prisons and jails in America come from lives of poverty and discrimination. A label such as “felon” or “inmate” contributes to keeping them at the margins of society.
I’m the president of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to covering criminal justice in the United States. We do not endorse candidates or political viewpoints, but we believe journalism can make our legal system more fair, effective, transparent and humane. Achieving that ambition requires covering people charged with and convicted of crimes as just that — people. It starts with the language we use.
The new edition of the Associated Press’s influential stylebook, coincidentally released the day before Trump’s conviction, states clearly, “Do not use felon, convict, or ex-con as nouns.” Instead, the stylebook advises journalists, “when possible, [to] use person-first language to describe someone who is incarcerated or someone in prison.” The stylebook included a criminal justice chapter for which the Marshall Project was consulted.
Labels marginalize people. They turn a moving verb into a fixed noun. They dehumanize and subjugate. As my colleague Lawrence Bartley wrote in a moving essay, “I Am Not Your ‘Inmate,’” that term fell on his ears like the n-word.
“Person-first” language is a concept borrowed from the disability rights movement. We should use it as best we can, but in the beautifully clear words of the editor overseeing our guidance on word choice, Akiba Solomon, “journalism is a discipline of clarity.” Journalists shouldn’t use jargon. People need to understand what the heck we’re writing about.
At the same time, language can and should change.
Trump does not come from the margins of society. He is wealthy and powerful and was convicted of 34 felonies. Why should the media treat him with the same care it’s beginning to show toward other people convicted of felonies?
By calling Trump a “felon,” we risk rehabilitating a word that has fallen out of favor for good reason.
Trump is a person convicted of felonies. So are millions of other Americans. How we describe him affects them, too.
