While editing a report, I came across the adjective high-quality. I'm sure I've seen this word many times before, but I was on brevity patrol that day and so paused for reflection. Using track changes, I commented, "Doesn't high-quality mean the same thing as quality?"
The author of the document disagreed, as did another colleague, as did my Twitter friends. City Girl's reply was particularly insightful: "Acura makes quality cars, but Mercedes makes high-quality cars."
In other words, quality means "good," whereas high-quality means "great."
This was a plausible distinction, yet upon further reflection, I did what I should have done in the first place: consulted the dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster, quality means "high quality," while high-quality isn't even listed.
I'm not sure you can define a word using that word, but, in my book, Merriam-Webster is the gold standard. Therefore, high-quality is a tautology.
As a stickler for tautologies, when I started hearing the term "news media" on a routine basis, my face crinkled and the gears in my head went to work. Isn't this redundant, I asked myself? If the media aren't news-based, what are they?, I asked a colleague.
His reply: "'News media' is a subset of media; other members include entertainment media and, say, opinion media." My reply is below.
I'd consider "entertainment" reporters to be part of the "news" media, since drawing the line between "entertainment" and "news" is so fuzzy: one man's "gossip" (say, John's Edwards's affair) rightfully is another's news.
On the other hand, the distinction between pundits, who deliver opinions, and reporters, who deliver facts, is a long-standing, crucial one. Yet here, too, the semantics trouble me.
To say that the "news media" excludes pundits seems like we're trying to force a concept upon a word ("media") which doesn't lend itself, semantically, to this distinction. "News media" consists of a noun followed by a noun, and "opinion media," or "opinion-based media," sounds even worse.
Better, I think, to let "media" encompass everyone, and use traditional terms like "reporters" and "pundits" when we need to be specific.
