Executive Overview
Language has never been a neutral vessel in American politics, but the boundaries of acceptable journalistic discourse are currently facing an unprecedented stress test. When the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision striking down an executive order by President Donald Trump aimed at restricting birthright citizenship, the ruling immediately generated a secondary firestorm—not over the constitutional law itself, but over the words used to discuss it.
Scattered throughout the June 30 ruling were decades-old legal terms: "alien parents," "alien nations," and "transient aliens." However, it was a searing dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas that fractured the media landscape. In his opinion, Thomas not only cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision—which ruled that people of African descent could not be U.S. citizens—but also independently injected the term "illegal aliens" into the official record.
This inclusion forced newsrooms across the country into an immediate, high-stakes editorial crisis. Major outlets found themselves sharply divided on a fundamental ethical question: When public officials and Supreme Court justices employ terminology widely criticized as dehumanizing or politically weaponized, do news organizations have a professional obligation to repeat it for the sake of the historical record, or does doing so make them complicit in normalizing bigotry?
While legacy institutions like The Associated Press and The Los Angeles Times argue that accurately documenting official language is essential for holding power accountable, media ethicists, journalism professors, and industry association leaders counter that repeating inflammatory terms causes measurable harm. This debate goes far beyond semantics; it strikes at the core of how modern journalism constructs reality, manages public perception, and defines neutrality in an increasingly polarized political climate.
Detailed Chronology: The Supreme Court Ruling and the Press Collision
The controversy began unfolding on the morning of June 30, when the Supreme Court released its decision on presidential birthright citizenship restrictions. The majority opinion invalidated the Trump administration’s attempt to deny citizenship to the children of foreign temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants.
Within the dense legal text, the word "alien" appeared dozens of times, predominantly in historical contexts and references to prior jurisprudence. But Justice Thomas’s dissent crossed a boundary that many editors have spent decades trying to redraw. Writing in opposition to the majority, Thomas stated:
"The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens… In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support."
The inclusion of the phrase "illegal aliens" in a Supreme Court document triggered an immediate fracture in editorial execution:
- The New York Times and The Washington Post: Both publications reported comprehensively on the ruling and quoted extensively from Thomas’s dissent. However, their editorial discretion led them to omit the specific phrase "illegal aliens" from their cited excerpts, successfully reporting the substance of his argument without amplifying the contested terminology.
- The Associated Press (AP): Adhering to a traditional interpretation of institutional transparency, the AP chose to include the exact phrasing in its coverage, sparking internal and external debates about the sanitization of official speech.
This divergence exposed a systemic lack of uniformity across American journalism. As newsrooms grapple with how to cover political rhetoric that pushes past historical boundaries, the lack of a unified standard has left reporters and editors navigating a minefield of ethical dilemmas on a case-by-case basis.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Evolution of Newsroom Language Policies
The struggle over the word "alien" is part of a broader, decades-long reckoning within the media industry regarding immigration coverage. For generations, terms like "illegal alien," "illegal immigrant," and simply "illegals" were standard entries in stylebooks. However, mounting pressure from immigrant advocacy groups, coupled with a growing awareness of how language shapes public policy, has driven a massive shift.
A Decade of Policy Shifts
In 2013, The Los Angeles Times updated its style guidelines to heavily restrict the use of "illegal immigration" and ban descriptors like "illegal alien" outside of direct quotes. The paper’s policy explicitly states:
"In covering both individuals and groups, the goal is to provide relevance and context and to avoid labels… Use the term illegal immigration to describe the phenomenon of entering or residing in a country in violation of the law. Avoid using illegal immigrant or undocumented immigrant to describe individuals except when necessary in direct quotations."
Other major outlets have similarly revised their style guides, phasing out "undocumented immigrant" in some contexts due to its technical inaccuracy—since many asylum seekers possess provisional government documentation—while entirely dropping "alien" due to its increasingly pejorative connotations.
The Rise of the "Truth Sandwich"
To navigate these minefields, ethics experts have popularized frameworks like the "truth sandwich." Stephen J. Adler, former editor-in-chief of Reuters and director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative at New York University, advocates for this measured approach when dealing with inflammatory official language.
"I think if it’s in a court decision or it’s stated by a public official like the president and the topic of the story is newsworthy, you can’t avoid writing about it," Adler explained. However, he stressed the importance of structural containment:
"I would like a truth sandwich. Use the bad language once, but don’t normalize it. Don’t encourage it. Don’t make me feel as if it’s OK. Switch to paraphrasing as quickly as possible and return to language considered neutral."
Official Statements & Industry Perspectives
The debate over the Supreme Court dissent highlights a profound philosophical divide among media leaders regarding the social responsibility of the press.
The Traditionalist View: Accurate Documentation Over Sanitization
Defenders of including unvarnished official language argue that altering or omitting the words used by powerful figures distorts the historical record. John Daniszewski, former vice president for standards at The Associated Press, maintains that journalists covering the judiciary or the executive branch must not sanitize the speech of public officials.
"Obviously, we have to use the language they use," Daniszewski said.
Scott Kraft, editor at large for enterprise journalism and special projects at The Los Angeles Times, echoed this sentiment, framing it as a matter of accountability rather than endorsement.
"Reflecting exactly what is said, and holding speakers and public officials accountable for their choice of words, is not an endorsement of that language. It’s an important part of journalism—to be accurate, true to the historical record, and to hold people accountable."
The Reformist View: The Duty to Do No Harm
Conversely, a growing cohort of journalism educators and media critics argue that repeating derogatory or racially charged language actively inflicts psychological and social harm, regardless of who uttered it.
Charles Whitaker, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, argues that journalists are under no obligation to perpetuate offensive terminology. He draws a direct parallel to how sports media successfully handled team names offensive to Indigenous populations long before franchises like the Washington NFL team officially rebranded.
"I don’t see this necessarily as ‘pushing society forward’ as much as recognizing the power of our words to do harm. And if our responsibility as the chroniclers of our time is to—as the doctors pledge—do no harm, we should strive to mitigate the harm in the language we use," Whitaker stated.
Whitaker advocates for a system where journalists acknowledge that officials are using offensive terms through direct quotes while actively refusing to adopt those terms in their own narration—suggesting methods akin to bleeping profanity or using explicit appositions.
Dehumanization and Political Weaponization
This perspective is shared by Aubrey Nagle, director of learning and community at the Public Media Journalists Association. Nagle argues that terms like "alien" are deliberately deployed as nouns—rather than adjectives—to dehumanize immigrant populations and construct an adversarial "us versus them" dynamic.
"They’re using language like ‘alien,’ like ‘illegal,’ as a noun in order to speak pejoratively about people—and to make the public feel that there is an us versus them, that these people are different," Nagle noted, warning that repeating these terms makes news outlets complicit in political targeting.
Eric Deggans, critic-at-large at NPR, categorizes "alien" as a "borderline slur" and rejects the notion that stripping such words from reporting constitutes a political act.
"People who say that not using that term is political, they’re completely getting it wrong. Using the term is political, and we’re trying to, as more objective, fair-minded journalists, pull away from that. We’re trying to take some of the emotion and the temperature and the politics out of these references."
Future Outlook: Navigating the Intersection of News, Ethics, and Power
As the political landscape grows increasingly adversarial, the challenges facing newsrooms will only intensify. The debate sparked by Justice Thomas’s dissent goes far beyond a single legal filing or a specific immigration debate; it exposes the structural vulnerability of journalistic norms when confronted with institutionalized rhetoric designed to divide.
The modern newsroom must evolve past the rigid, reflexive binary of "he said, she said" reporting. As Stephen Adler pointed out, journalism has always made choices about style, decency, and societal values—from purging racial slurs from headlines to adopting guidelines that respect modern sensibilities.
The path forward requires a synthesis of rigorous accountability and ethical mindfulness. Journalists must continue to report on the actions, rulings, and statements of the nation’s highest officials without shielding the public from the reality of their ideological stances. At the same time, editors must exercise sophisticated editorial judgment to ensure that reporting on inflammatory language does not cross the line into amplifying propaganda or normalizing dehumanization.
Ultimately, the future of ethical journalism depends on the industry’s ability to recognize that words possess weight and consequence. By refusing to let institutional power dictate the moral baseline of public discourse, the press can fulfill its dual mandate: preserving an accurate historical record while steadfastly refusing to act as a megaphone for exclusion.