Axios

Feb 18, 2025 –Business

Exclusive: MAGA’s list of AP grievances

• Marc Caputo

Republican grievances against the AP Stylebook’s influential guidance on topics like race, gender and immigration have incubated for more than a decade — culminating last week with President Trump’s expulsion of Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office.

The big picture: The White House blamed the restriction on AP’s recent “Gulf of Mexico” decision. But it’s part of a broader escalation against what conservatives see as the AP’s tight control over the news media’s word choices, as Axios’ Marc Caputo reported.

• At a Mar-a-Lago press conference on Tuesday, Trump said that “some of the phrases that they want to use are ridiculous.”

The backstory: The first notable conservative complaint surfaced in 2013, when AP discontinued “illegal immigrant” following a pressure campaign from immigrant-rights advocates. Congress was debating a major immigration overhaul at the time.

• Then and now, AP disputes the accusation that its Stylebook favors a political party, movement or ideology. Lauren Easton, AP’s vice president of corporate communications, told Axios the news service “doesn’t align with any particular agenda.” AP provides style guidance to members and customers “and it is up to them what they choose to use,” she said.

How it works: For most of its 179 years, AP has been viewed as non-controversial — known for just-the-facts neutrality. The AP Stylebook, first published in 1953, is a basic text in journalism schools — and the first grammar and style guide most U.S. news outlets (including Axios) consult when setting their own rules. The guide is constantly evolving.

• The style rules that rankle conservatives are nested among thousands of Stylebook directives about punctuation and grammar, most of them time-tested and innocuous — capitalization, commas and company names.

Zoom in: Below are some of the AP style guidelines that have stuck in the craws of conservative critics. Axios compiled the list by checking common complaints from MAGA influencers against specific wording in AP guidance.

• Warning against “all views” in transgender coverage: AP’s “Transgender Coverage Topical Guide” says to avoid “false balance — giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views.”

• Using “gender-affirming care”: AP says the term, commonly used by advocates and physicians, refers to “a swath of mental and medical treatments (such as counseling, hormones or surgery) that help bring a person’s gender expression (such as voice, appearance or anatomy) in line with their gender identity.”

• Using “sex assigned at birth”: That’s recommended “instead of biological sex, birth gender, was identified at birth as, born a girl and the like,” the style guide says. “Avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, or phrasing like birth gender. Sex assigned at birth is the accurate terminology.”

• The concept of “non-binary” language: “Experts,” the guide says, “say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting of only males and females.”

• Excluding binary terms concerning sex or gender: “Since not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender — as in the cases of nonbinary and intersex people — avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders,” the guide says.

• Opposing language of transgender critics: “Do not use the term transgenderism, which frames transgender identity as an ideology,” AP says.

• Using trans activists’ language: The Stylebook discusses “deadnaming,” a transgender advocates’ term that refers to a person’s original name that “can be akin to using a slur and can cause feelings of gender dysphoria to resurface.”

• Calling out transgender critics: The guide notes that “opponents of youth transgender medical treatment say there’s no solid proof of purported benefits, cite widely discredited research and say children shouldn’t make life-altering decisions they might regret.”

• Capitalizing Black but not white for race: The Stylebook advises that “Black” should be used for racial descriptions while the lowercase “black” is considered just a color. AP says “white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.” AP notes that white people “generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.”

• Limiting use of the word “riot”: AP says that “focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching or police brutality or for racial justice, going back at least to the urban uprisings of the 1960s in the U.S.”

• Alternatives to “Hispanic”: The Stylebook says that “Latino, Latina or Latinx are sometimes preferred” over Hispanic. Poll after poll shows Hispanic is preferred, and support for using Latinx is minuscule.

• Describing immigrants: The Stylebook frowns on the term “illegal immigrant” and says to “use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.” AP doesn’t recommend “undocumented immigrant,” and says acceptable “variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission. For people: immigrants lacking permanent legal status.”

• Disfavoring the term “anchor babies”: The Stylebook says it’s “a pejorative term in the U.S. for children who are born to noncitizen parents wanting to take advantage of birthright citizenship.”

• Disfavoring “catch and release”: The Stylebook notes it’s “a term favored by advocates of immigration restriction” for those caught illegally in the country who are then released in the U.S. But the guide calls it a “misleading and dehumanizing term.”

• Avoiding “chain migration”: AP notes it’s a term used by immigration restrictionists, and says to avoid it in referring “to what the U.S. government calls family-based immigration.” The guide says the term is “vague and may imply unfettered immigration.”

• Cautioning against “terrorism and terrorist” because they’ve become “politicized”: The Stylebook says that instead of “labeling an attack or attacker as terrorism or terrorist, AP describes the specific atrocity, massacre, bombing, or assassination, and so on. We do not use the terms terrorism or terrorist for specific actions or groups, other than when attributed to authorities or others.”

• Changing the spelling of Ukraine’s capital: In 2019, AP announced a style change to spell the city “Kyiv” to align with the government’s spelling, and not “Kiev,” which is more associated with Russia. (Chicken Kiev, however, remains unchanged in the style guide).

Criticisms from liberal circles are harder to find — or were resolved, like some concerning coverage of racism or race and ethnicity. But there are some:

• Use of “Palestine”: Supporters of Palestinian rights, who tend to be left-adjacent, have for years complained that AP style says the West Bank and Gaza should not be referred to as “Palestine … since it is not a fully independent, unified state.”

• President Trump’s conviction: The organization was also criticized by those on the left for not routinely describing Trump as a “convicted felon” during the campaign.

The other side: Easton says that only does the AP Stylebook not align with any one agenda, it “is used as a writing and editing reference worldwide. It contains thousands of entries. It offers guidance on spelling, language, punctuation and journalistic style and is regularly updated as usage evolves. In doing so, we consider a wide range of input.”

• “Updates are made with an eye to making the news report clear, accurate and easily understood by a global audience. Like AP journalism, guidance offered in the Stylebook is used by organizations that span the political spectrum.”

AP defenders say that objections to Stylebook prescriptions are no justification for punishing journalists. Several news organizations and press groups have issued statements condemning the White House actions.

• An AP statement says: “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”