frantic: (adj.) excessively agitated; transported with rage or other violent emotion
Like my friend Paul Kedrosky, I find myself somewhat bemused by the recent story from the Financial Times, in which Google is described as being engaged in a “frantic” round of negotiations with content providers for licensing rights. Paul notes that in another story, Google’s quest is described as a “slog,” which leads him to wonder whether it’s even possible to be in a frantic slog (and then to suggest that “frantic slog” would be a great band name, which it definitely would).
This is one of those cases where the choice of a single word can twist the perception of a story almost irrevocably, especially when it appears in the lead paragraph. The folks at the pink paper, as some Brits calls it, aren’t normally known for cranking up the rhetoric the way some of the tabloids do, but I think this time they let their enthusiasm get the better of them. The rest of the story is a relatively straight-forward look at what Google is trying to do, but the word “frantic” is all out of proportion and that ultimately hurts the story.
As the ever-perceptive Cynthia Brumfield notes at IPDemocracy, sometimes it’s just more exciting to think of a gigantic multibillion-dollar behemoth like Google getting “frantic” about something, or facing a “potentially crippling” round of lawsuits, in the same way that financial reporters like to talk about an earnings “bloodbath” or how a company is “hemorrhaging” money. It makes it sound more interesting. Unfortunately, it’s also hyperbole.