I feel like we, as in our press and tbh all of us, repeat terms as they are presented by other countries as if they were peer Democracies, no questions asked.
Putin is President of the Russian Federation. Not dictator, not authoritarian leader who murders his opponents, nope "President."
Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. Yup, it's a Republic. Not a single party state, and he is not the Emperor, whose opponents keep mysteriously dying. It's totally normal. He's just the "President" of China.
Can anyone with journalism experience explain to me how this works?
I'm a bit confused about the question and how this relates to the topic.
I don't know how many journalists are lurking non-front page HN stories, so you'll probably get a non-journalist answer to the question (if anyone ventures, I'll try).
I think you may be trying to ask a question about structuralist/realist theories of international relations, vs constructivist theories of international relations. Basically "sure there's some structuralist arguments, re: Thucydides, that the US should be expected to agitate for conflict, but what about democracy vs non-democracy - can't that better or equally explain sources of conflict?"
If that's what you mean you could look at the many places in the world where authoritarianism is recognized, accepted, even partnered with the United States (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, ...). In these cases you'll find the US partners with these allies, emboldens and arms them, due to shared structural/realist interests.
As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
To learn more about governments around the world I would point to the CIA World Fact Book, which uses a taxonomic approach to classifying various systems. The CIA considers Russia to be a "semi-presidential federation" and indeed Putin is elected and extremely popular. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/russia/#gov...). The CIA considers China to be a "communist party-led state" and indeed Jinping is the factually elected president of the single communist party. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/china/#gove...).
Learning more about other leaders in these countries - their parliaments, their ministries, their election processes, their legislation drafting processes, etc - can help to abate some of the instincts to assume that political systems, because they aren't understood, are hostage/authoritarian situations. A good exercise is to learn at least ten other important officials from a given country and their roles for leading that country. I think trying this exercise yourself could help you answer your question above.
> I'm a bit confused about the question and how this relates to the topic.
I'm sorry, while I did in-fact respond to your comment, I was just complaining out loud. I should have made a top level comment. However, you did give me a thoughtful reply. My apologies for only responding to this paragraph:
> As far as the naming of people's titles around the world. I very often read glib/vitriolic denigrations of the specific people you've mentioned in US press. These articles tend to be intended more for domestic catharsis/rallying than it is to be accurate/analytical, although sometimes the articles are very good and I assume the editors make those changes based on guidelines/policy.
I do believe in the supremacy of democracy. I have lived in an alternative, and it was bad. I do not have some theoretical respect for other government systems in this regard. Democracy is best for everyone, and I am not ashamed of this opinion. Nobody should be ashamed of this opinion. If a society is not ready for democracy, then it should be carpet bombed with Wikipedia.
There are multiple versions of democracies, for example, compared to the US system, a parliamentary system may have advantages.
The baseline that I wish journalists, and our "western" philosophy communication at-large could coalesce around is basically:
Single-party != democracy
If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
Thank you for the thoughtful response and for sharing your opinion.
About the standard you propose. It's interesting, but there might be some issues with it. I am writing this not to change your opinion but to expand on the idea with you.
> Single-party != democracy
The concept of parties being associated with democracy is somewhat new or "hyper-local" I think. In the West we often trace democracy to ancient Athens, crediting them with inventing democracy (although I'm sure historians would debate). From Wikipedia: a party system in ancient Athens did not exist, but voting for representation did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#:~:text=Tho....). This immediately disassociates the idea of democracy with the idea of parties. Parties are one way to organize coalitions of shared interest. Whereas democracy is a way for citizens to register their interests so that a government may address those interests.
As you suggested there are a wide range of different ways to organize democracy (parliament vs congress, representative vs direct, ...). There is in fact a Wikipedia article on different types of democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy . An interesting thing I learned reading this is most of 1700s Britain was a one-party (Whig) system and by this standard would not have been considered by your proposed standard.
> If there is no democracy, then there can be no "president."
Again here's something I found on Wikipedia. The history and meaning of the word president means "presides over" rather than it meaning anything in particular in association with democracy. Its first recorded uses were in Aramaic and in the Bible. Today's common usage today means "head of state, usually of a republic", but has no common meaning associated with democracy as a form of government.
> If you need a neutral term for that, maybe demote to a "leader."
I would just like to offer that if president means "presides over" and leader means "leads", someone else could have a similar objection you have to the use of "president" to the proposal to use "leader" - i.e. that we should not use it for persons who lead governments we don't consider to be "true democracies" because it shows some kind of respect or legitimacy.
> If a "leader" has murdered all of his opponents, then we should go with something actively derogatory. Not only should no respect be given, but the title should be extremely negative.
I suppose the idea here is that using a title that describes their role "quarterback Bob", "person who presides over, president, El-Sisi" gives some respect for their having that role, and we shouldn't give them that respect even if its technically accurate to describe them as the role they have. And if we think they've done something heinous we should give them a title that is heinous to disrespect them. "Smelly Bob", "Dipshit El-Sisi".
Here I think its fine for politicians, whose role is swaying public opinion and rousing people, to show disrespect or to not show respect. But I worry about setting standards for journalists because restricting them from accurately describing the roles of persons could undermine their job of communicating context and information, and it suggests that a journalist's role is to disrespect or respect persons, rather than focusing on being as accurate and informative as possible. I worry about the quality of information available in the US (where I live), and so I would worry this could further deteriorate what I perceive to be vulnerable.
In fact, I'll go further and say that I don't like it when journalists/editors go about trying to tell me what to think about a topic. I prefer that they law out a clear, accurate, precise and reproducible set of facts, observations and analysis - from which I can draw my own conclusions. Said another way, I like facts changing people's minds, rather than opinions changing people's minds, at least whenever we can afford it.
In terms of how often such a proposal could actually be used? I think there'd be some subjectivity in this, a "no true scotsman" type argument that would come up if the proposal were taken serious and made a standard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)
For example, take Vladimir Putin. One could try to argue that he's murdered all of his opponents. On the other hand this man was part of 5 presidential elections. In 2000 he faced 10 opponents. In 2004 he faced 5 opponents. In 2012 he faced 4 opponents. In 2018 he faced 7 opponents. In 2024 he faced 3 opponents. If one researches these opponents they were serious contenders for election (for a multi-party system).
The point is that I think some persons, using your proposal, would wish to apply it to an adversary of the United States, because disrespecting an adversary is a popular thing to do. Others would choose not to, instead making a judgement call that 29 serious non-murdered opponents qualifies him as president or leader.
And if we get to that case, were baseline is actually a judgement call instead of an objective editorial policy, I think the standard becomes more of a signal of a journalist's opinion or the outlet's editor than it is communicating to the audience some consistent message. And we're a little bit back in the boat we are already in (without a real baseline established).
Therefore overall I think the proposal might be benefitted by a rethink, as there are multiple ways in which it might not achieve the objectives it may be inspired by?
Putin is President of the Russian Federation. Not dictator, not authoritarian leader who murders his opponents, nope "President."
Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. Yup, it's a Republic. Not a single party state, and he is not the Emperor, whose opponents keep mysteriously dying. It's totally normal. He's just the "President" of China.
Can anyone with journalism experience explain to me how this works?