His name was Jarlath Burke, editor of the Tuam Herald. He was famously intelligent, burdened by integrity, and fabulously difficult (though like a lot of those old newspaper dinosaurs, he was easier on girls). He was not a nationally celebrated journalist; he did not abandon a tiny west of Ireland town for the opportunities presented by Dublin newspapers, because he believed in the decency of a provincial press (a decency that is disappearing from regional newspapers as fast as from the rest).

When Jarlath Burke died more than 10 years ago, the press had not yet given itself over to the 'what my two-yearold said to my three-year-old' school of writing. That is one thing that would have incensed him.

There is another, and it's the use of language. JP would dash into one of his notorious rages at the misuse of an adjective. The proper placement of a semicolon could brighten his mood for the whole day. He encouraged imagination, but not if intelligibility was the cost. He wanted you to think freely, but not at the expense of the facts.

Cranky, shirt-sleeved, visorwearing, hot metal-loving, oldfashioned newspaper people might have abhorred the abuse of words, but the abuse of meaning is much worse.

We are losing our grip on our own language (English, and please, the Irish question is another story) at a shocking rate.

This doesn't mean Americanese, though Americanese is a pity. Nor does it mean split infinitives and misplaced apostrophes and what have you. Bad grammar is understandable. Failing to be lucid is understandable. But allowing yourself to be manipulated by vested interests, if you're among those who claim the right to be a medium between populace and establishment, is inexcusable.

Politicians will naturally supply you with 500 words when 50 would do. They are terrified, hunted creatures.

They are trying to throw you off the scent. Gardai will describe a car as a "mechanically-propelled vehicle" and say things like "I formed the opinion". They are trying to sound authoritative. Lawyers will say they have "had sight of" something they have seen, though there's no knowing why that is.

Businessmen . . . the ones with the real political power, undemocratic but handsomely paidfor -. . . have devised their own language. "Uncompetitive" is a word coined by them, usually to bemoan some aspect of the social contract:

there are workers who demand fair pay; there are other companies getting a state subvention; there is corporation tax.

All of these people want us to toe their line, and we oblige.

We repeat what they say as if we had been born without intellectual filters. This reckless neglect of accuracy is never more dangerous than in a war.

Newspapers will describe Israel as "pressing an offensive", which takes the killing out of it. They will echo Condoleezza Rice's waffle about a "balanced approach" and a "new Middle East". They will support the fiction that Israel is fighting a permissible battle against "strategic targets".

Those who think differently place themselves on the fringes partly because they use a less "moderate" language, one that doesn't depend on the tautology that the media regard as decorous.

Thus the five anti-war protesters who last week were acquitted of criminal damage to a US plane in Shannon airport, in one of the most significant decisions ever to emerge from an Irish court, render themselves unquotable by mentioning "the conscience of the community".

Islamists marginalise themselves non-stop by bringing Allah into things. This just isn't corporate. We don't like it. Israel knows better than to reveal its true, old-testament fundamentalism in colourful language. This is how it rakes in $3bn in aid from Washington annually, and conceals its intention to destroy Lebanon and redraw its borders.

With the 'right' language, you really can get away with murder.