Eschew Obfuscation

Whenever a person, company, or agency starts manipulating language and resorting to euphemisms, it’s time to pay very close attention. For any of us who make our living as communicators – or who hire communicators to get our messages out – it’s important to realize that our audiences are not stupid. Obfuscation doesn’t fool people; it merely alerts them that somebody is trying to hide something.

According to Webster’s, to “obfuscate” is “to make dark or unclear” in order to “muddle, confuse, or bewilder.” At a public hearing last week about the proposed Idaho Roadless Rule, I heard quite a bit of obfuscation in action.

The issue being discussed was whether to open up currently protected backcountry roadless areas in Idaho to road construction for logging and mining. The Idaho Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service representatives wouldn’t come right out and admit that, though.

Instead, those who attended the hearing were assured that “temporary roads” were only to be permitted in rare instances of “mineral activity” and “stewardship projects” for forest health.

Right. Many critical thinkers in attendance pointed out that there is no such thing as a temporary road. Wagon ruts on the Oregon Trail are still visible more than 100 years after the last wagon made the trek. Clearly, roads built with bulldozers and modern grading equipment to accommodate multi-ton trucks will not just disappear.

And what exactly are forest health “stewardship projects?” It wasn’t made clear what “stewardship” means. But my guess is that it will have more to do with cutting down trees than feeding them compost tea.

My favorite fuzzy term of all, though, was “mineral activity.” Minerals are rocks, and it’s been my experience that they are not especially active, nor does phosphate get restless and spring out of the ground on its own. What’s with the smokescreen? Do the governor’s team and the Forest Service honestly expect the public to believe that “mineral activity” is not really phosphate mining?

By underestimating their audience’s intelligence, obfuscators lose that audience’s trust along with their own credibility.

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