The Washington Redskins may soon be facing yet another opponent in the fight to keep their controversial and possibly offensive team name, as Rick Snider of CBS Washington is reporting that the Associated Press is considering the removal of the term Redskins from its stylebook.
"The AP stylebook review committee is considering whether Redskins is an offensive term and should be removed from its stories," Snider's report reads.
This could prove a major detriment to Redskins team owner Dan Snyder, as the removal of the term from the stylebook would greatly decrease the team's visibility in the general news cycle, significantly hindering the Redskins media and public relations machine and potentially initiating a trend that would ultimately sound a death knell for the name - as Snider puts it, "avalanches begin with a snowflake."
What started with a campaign by a group of American Indian activists, led to a decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel six federal trademarks for the franchise after determining the term Redskins was "disparaging to Native Americans" - a decision which was appealed by Snyder, but recently endorsed by the Department of Justice - which then led Snyder to file a lawsuit against the Native American activists.
To this point, the NFL's other teams have done their best to skirt the issue, and major corporate sponsorships have not been endangered by the controversy, so Snyder and the organization can stick to their "never-ever"-change-the-name guns.
"Sure, ESPN, the NFL Network and others would still use Redskins, and that's more important nowadays than AP, but know that other major news outlets have boycott sympathizers who might use AP's decision to re-open discussions in their outlets, if only not to seem sympathetic," Snider surmises. "After all, AP didn't have a problem with using Redskins until it now maybe does. Others may follow and eventually that might lead to advertisers worrying over the team's loss of its brand."
Should the AP in fact remove the term from its stylebook - a stylebook used by nearly every newspaper and by many websites, magazines, broadcasters and public relations firms in the United States - Washington would suffer a significant blow to its case for - and potentially Snyder's desire to - keep the name.
Much like the fight for marriage equality before it, this seems like an issue bound for one eventual outcome - Snyder and the franchise relenting and changing the name, however reluctantly, whether now or sometime in the future.
