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News are terrible at that kind of writing. For instance with traffic incidents, it's always "a person getting hit by a car", not "a driver ramming their car int
by matsemann 5y ago
News are terrible at that kind of writing. For instance with traffic incidents, it's always "a person getting hit by a car", not "a driver ramming their car into a person". So they write it like as if the driver had no agency, and the incident was completely non-avoidable and no one should stop to think about why it happened or how it can be prevented in the future. For good measurement they also use the word "accident" a lot.
Wording matter.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Wording matter. " It does. "a person getting hit by a car" is quite neutral. "a driver ramming their car into a person"." This sounds intentional and shifts blame to the driver.
- matsemann 5y agoPoint was to show the two extremes, with news articles mostly using the passive one (which you call neutral but is far from neutral). So in practice never assigning blame to the driver no matter what, or even vaguely assigning the blame to the victim. A good image breaking down a news article in this way: https://www.camcycle.org.uk/magazine/newsletter110/article8/ https://www.camcycle.org.uk/magazine/newsletter110/article8/ It says "the victim was struck" as if it was their fault being where they were, not "the driver struck the victim".
- anoncake 5y agoThe wording shouldn't sound intentional but the driver usually is to blame.