I've stayed away from the controversy about the Islamic community center planned in lower Manhattan, including references to it as "Ground Zero mosque." I figured early on that the inaccurate portrayal would be adopted by the New York tabs and not by real newspapers. As is the case more and more lately when I believe newspapers will do the right thing, I was wrong.
The New York Times appears to be alone among the big publications in
rejecting the headline-friendly but inaccurate and, now, politically charged shorthand. I do not understand how any slot editor could let it through. It's inaccurate and everyone knows it. (Michael Calderone's
story traces the history of the usage)
I never understood why "ground zero" became an accepted term for the World Trade Center site. From May 28, 2002:
"Ground zero" has a long history as a cliché but was occasionally useful in its original sense, meaning the point at which a nuclear explosion is triggered. To apply the term to the World Trade Center is to be needlessly vague about the nature of the attack. It also makes the term useless in its original sense, particularly in reference to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Ngasaki, Japan, in 1945.
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