Branding the economic crisis

The Great Depression. The French and Indian War. World War I. Watergate. The Civil Rights Movement.

We read about them in history books and use them in everyday conversations. We understand them, connect to them and can talk to someone across the world about them and still maintain understanding and connectivity.

But who came up with the names? And when? And how?

Today, the economic crisis is struggling through its own branding. While there's certainly chaos on Wall Street, there's also chaos in newsrooms trying to establish a common term that newspapers around the country can use and retain understanding among readers, no matter where they live. Right now, possibilities include the "Wall Street Crisis," the "Credit Crisis," and the "Great Recession."

It seems to me that the same struggle continues with the Iraq War - Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Second Gulf War, the Occupation of Iraq. We all connect with different names that ultimately mean the same thing, but we might miss an initial understanding when we're talking to another person. So who chooses the final brand?

Most of the time, it's journalists. Once newspapers around the country all start using the same terms and names, it doesn't take long before they start to stick. People will use them in everyday conversation and eventually there will no longer be initial confusion about an event being discussed.

It's interesting being in the middle of branding. Sure, I've always been aware of it. Reading about the Civil War, I knew someone must have named it, but I never thought about why they did or how long it might have taken for it to become the "Civil War" rather than the "Union/Confederate War" or the "War Between the North and South."

One day, my children will come home from school talking about the "Great Recession." Maybe I'll tell them how it got its name. Maybe it doesn't really matter. But the process is important and will continue as long as journalism is around (which will be a long, long time).

Truth

My roommate asked me a really interesting question today.

How will George W. Bush's presidency be viewed down the road?

Of course, 69 percent of Americans are happy to see him go. He has the lowest approval rating of any president. He's been virtually snuffed out of the news. No one really cares about him anymore. But what will the history books say?

My roommate's hypothetical situation: Say we ultimately "win the war" on terror. Will Bush be better liked? Or will people still see his decisions as wrong?

My response (after clarifying to her that this is a purely hypothetical situation) was yes and no. I think our generation - mine and my roommate's and anyone older than us - will always see Bush's actions in a negative light, no matter what happens. We're old enough to have friends in Iraq or family members in Afghanistan and those are things you just don't forget. Even if there's a positive outcome to this war, people will still say, "Well, it shouldn't have ever happened in the first place" or "Bush started it but he didn't fix it."

But my 18-year-old brother and his friends are a different story. If something good does happen, their education will focus on the end, not on the initial years. Slowly, people's perceptions of the war will become composed of facts, not emotions. My knowledge of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars is based on the facts that I learned in high school, and they don't teach you how close my friends' fathers came to being drafted or how many lives of kids our age were lost. We become detached. And then we forget. And then we make the same mistakes years later. I don't know how many more mistakes we can afford to make.

I think it comes down to the media's responsibility. Unbiased reporting is the core of any story. Yes, opinions are essential and they are the foundation of this country. But leave the opinions on the op-ed page. We need to give people the facts so that years from now, they'll be able to form their opinions based off of truth and not the opinions of 69 percent of the population, however true they may be.