“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

— Through the Looking Glass (1872)

Evidently, the SPJ agrees with Humpty:

The Society of Professional Journalists voted this week to impose even more political correctness when they passed a resolution to urge newsrooms to drop the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant,” saying that only courts can decide when a person has committed an illegal act.

Their logic is elusive:

[Rebecca] Aguilar [of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists] said that the terms insult Latinos who are or who had once been in the U.S. illegally, citing the case of her mother who became a citizen in 1980.

That’s right. It’s insulting to be called illegal when you broke the law by entering the country illegally.

Heaven forbid that we should insult criminals.

From the SPJ resolution:

“WHEREAS only the court system, not reporters and editors, can decide when a person has committed an illegal act and;

“WHEREAS, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is also concerned with the increasing use of pejorative and potentially inaccurate terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States;

“THEREFORE, be it resolved that the Society of Professional Journalists convention of delegates: urges journalists and style guide editors to stop the use of illegal alien and encourage continuous discussion and re-evaluation of the use of illegal immigrant in news stories.”

As for “the esimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States”: It could actually be as many as 30-40 million; and most of them have more documents — usually forged — than the average native-born American citizen.

Don Irvine‘s conclusion:

The only people offended are those in the SPJ who disagree with the efforts of those who are fighting the illegal immigration problem in this country. By passing this resolution they are clearly taking a political stand on the issue, which brings into question their desire for objectivity when reporting the news.

See Irvine’s AIM posting here.