We’ve got a ‘citizens initiated referendum’ coming up on a hot topic – to smack or not to smack – your children. No matter what side of the fence you sit you can’t deny the one-sidedness of the question we’re being asked to vote on. It says:
“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”
That’s it. No punctuation, no option, either you agree with the statement or you don’t! It’s interesting that the process in which the anti-smacking bill came about was as bias as this (it got snuck through virtually overnight), so you’ve got to see the humour in this perceived swing in position! But is it a swing in opinion, or just laziness in the form of a poorly written question? Our government has spent a lot of money promoting this referendum, surely they could afford a copy writer to ensure the question made sense?
This one line incorporates a couple of questions, so what one are we answering?
“Is a smack part of good parental correction?”
“Should a smack be a criminal offence?” or,
“Should we be arrested if it is deemed bad parental correction?”
To go further, (because I can) – does a smack really correct the parents?
So if a big agency can make this error, what about the small business? With all the expense and time you put into your campaigns, have you stopped to check your headlines? I’m sure you know what you meant when you write them, just as I’m sure the organisers know what they meant when they wrote this referendum question, but it’s not them that make the vote. If they’d passed this by the person in the street to read first, I’m sure they would not be coming under as much fire, and we could focus on the view, not the literature.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 and is filed under In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
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Headline does smack of one-sidedness
We’ve got a ‘citizens initiated referendum’ coming up on a hot topic – to smack or not to smack – your children. No matter what side of the fence you sit you can’t deny the one-sidedness of the question we’re being asked to vote on. It says:
“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”
That’s it. No punctuation, no option, either you agree with the statement or you don’t! It’s interesting that the process in which the anti-smacking bill came about was as bias as this (it got snuck through virtually overnight), so you’ve got to see the humour in this perceived swing in position! But is it a swing in opinion, or just laziness in the form of a poorly written question? Our government has spent a lot of money promoting this referendum, surely they could afford a copy writer to ensure the question made sense?
This one line incorporates a couple of questions, so what one are we answering?
“Is a smack part of good parental correction?”
“Should a smack be a criminal offence?” or,
“Should we be arrested if it is deemed bad parental correction?”
To go further, (because I can) – does a smack really correct the parents?
So if a big agency can make this error, what about the small business? With all the expense and time you put into your campaigns, have you stopped to check your headlines? I’m sure you know what you meant when you write them, just as I’m sure the organisers know what they meant when they wrote this referendum question, but it’s not them that make the vote. If they’d passed this by the person in the street to read first, I’m sure they would not be coming under as much fire, and we could focus on the view, not the literature.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 and is filed under In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.