by Jon Brooks
The San Francisco Chronicle will no longer use the term “Redskins” when referring to Washington’s football team. The move comes amid renewed calls from many Native American groups to change a name they say is derogatory. Even President Obama weighed in this month, telling the Associated Press that he would “think about changing” the name if he owned the team.
Chronicle Managing Editor Audrey Cooper spoke today with KQED’s Mina Kim about the change. Cooper said one of the paper’s sports columnists recently brought up the issue, and that the Chronicle newsroom is almost unanimously in support of the move.
“I don’t think there are very many people who can debate that it is not a patently offensive term,” Cooper said, pointing out that other media outlets, including the Oregonian and Kansas City Star, have already made the change and that she expects more to follow suit. “We’re just increasingly making better decisions about how we’re using words, which are really powerful tools.”
You can listen to the interview here:
Earlier, Cooper told Politico:
“Words are powerful, and so is how we choose to use them,” Cooper said in an email. “Our long-standing policy is to not use racial slurs — and make no mistake, ‘redskin’ is a slur — except in cases where it would be confusing to the reader to write around it. For example, we will use the team name when referring to the controversy surrounding its use.”
Cooper said she doubts any regular reader of the Chronicle or website SFGate.com would have noticed the choice to use “Washington” instead of the team name, and that they are choosing to use another word that “accurately describes what we are writing about.”
NBC Sports first reported the news last night, attributing it to “multiple industry sources.”