The Media Style Guide (MSG) – Defining the World’s Words
The Media Style Guide (MSG) aims to define the most important words that people use around the world. Launched in 2022, with its first initiative to help ensure Islam and Muslims are defined with accuracy, authenticity and accountability in the world’s media, MSG aims to be the definitive source about the current and future usage and meanings of words, as words are powerful.
Words featured in the media in the short term inform and shape public policy in the medium term which inform and shape education and academia in the long-term, defining societies and civilisations. As the 21st century has increasingly become an era of not only military but cultural wars, nearly every aspect of life is being re-defined from gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and even the use of pronouns.
It is key that a definitive resource exists which allows for rational, fact-based definitions which are not used to create a narrative for political agendas. A famous African proverb quoted from J. Nozipo Maraire states, “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” If one does not shape their own narrative, they create a vacuum allowing others to create a narrative about them, and every narrative starts with a choice of powerful words with specific meanings.
MSG is then a resource to allow the people of the world to define themselves accurately, authentically and with accountability, and create their own narrative.
