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Tuesday Night Acoustic: Maneli Jamal - Movement III - on the Run

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simoom5/30/2012 1:34:47 am PDT

The AP wire service changed their style guidlines on the term only a couple months ago (mid-Feb), so that explains the 2010 FNC article:

poynter.org

This was been a good week for Alex Storozynski, the president and executive director of the Kosciuszko Foundation, and a former journalist with the New York Daily News and the New York Sun, among other publications. (He shared a 1999 Pulitzer as part of the News’ editorial board.)

The Kosciuszko Foundation is dedicated to fostering “educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Poland,” and in October 2010 it launched a petition to convince news organizations to stop referring to World War II Nazi concentration camps as “Polish death camps” and other variations.

The petition today has over 300,000 signatures. On Monday, one of its goals was realized when the Associated Press announced an update to its Stylebook that specified why the term “polish death camp” is not to be used by reporters and editors.

Similar updates have been made to other style guides, including those of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, according to Storozynski. The website iMediaEthics has been tracking this issue for some time, and noted the updates made by the Times and Journal, in addition to this week’s news.

I previously noted the frequent publication of “polish death camp” corrections in a 2006 post that shared results of a news database search. I turned up roughly 30 corrections, dating back to 1991. (Note that you need to click through an unfortunate but temporary malware warning to read the previous link.) I conducted another Nexis search today and found at least 11 corrections have been issued since my July 2006 post.

The corrections keep coming thanks to efforts by no less than the Polish Foreign Ministry and British Parliamentarians, along with other organizations and private citizens. Storozynski says a letter writing campaign predates his petition by several years. There is also a small Facebook group, a Wikipedia page, and many threads on the issue on PolishForums.com.