4 ms·

I've been employed as a newspaper editor and am familiar with libel laws and the ethics of journalism. What's been advocated for is accurate reporting, not conc

I've been employed as a newspaper editor and am familiar with libel laws and the ethics of journalism. What's been advocated for is accurate reporting, not conclusion-jumping. Currently there are headlines like this: "Car hits cyclist" Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike". A more accurate headline would be "Car driver hits cyclist". The other way to improve reporting is to call a preventable crash what it is, a crash and not an "accident". More here: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20049939/five-cyclist-blaming-headlines-and-how-to-reframe-them/ https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20049939/five-cyclist-blamin...

karaterobot 5y ago
> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? To humanize the victim without ascribing blame, when blame is unknown. For the same reason you wouldn't have a headline that read "Alice killed Bob with her car": even though that may technically be true, it's needlessly critical. Needless from the perspective of an editorially neutral party, like a newspaper, but not from the perspective of an activist, like this website.
- markstos 5y ago
  Consider when a terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Christmas%20market%20killed%20with%20car https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Christmas%20market%20k... Most headlines were like "Lorry kills 12 at Christmas Market", like there was a killer truck on the loose. Here's an alternate framing of an article where a car is a fatal weapon: "Driver plows car into pedestrians at German bus stop, killing one" https://www.dw.com/en/driver-plows-car-into-pedestrians-at-german-bus-stop-killing-one/a-46822959 https://www.dw.com/en/driver-plows-car-into-pedestrians-at-g... The lead clarifies that "no assumptions should be made at this point". It's factual that a man drove a truck into a Christmas market and another person drove into a pedestrian at a bus stop. That can be reported without an assumption of guilt without re-framing the story as if the cars drove themselves.
MauranKilom 5y ago
> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike". The car physically touched the bicyclist, hence "car hits cyclist". The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist, hence "driver hits cyclist" is inaccurate. "Car hits bicycle" is accurate but not the most relevant fact to report (unless nobody was riding it at the time?). I'm not sure why this point has not been discussed in this thread. Maybe my understanding of English is insufficiently advanced, but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another, not that the car crashed into the person riding a bicycle (although this can generally be inferred from the context).
- markstos 5y ago
  > The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist. A headline would be used even if the car did physically touch the cyclist but hit the bike and knocked the off. Also, we don't have headlines that say "bullet shoots child", because the person shooting the gun did not physically touch the child. In some of these cases, the car is the lethal weapon, the agency of person driving the car matters. > but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another "hits" can mean "impacted" or "run into", so it's accurate here even though it's not a punch.

karaterobot 5y ago

> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? To humanize the victim without ascribing blame, when blame is unknown. For the same reason you wouldn't have a headline that read "Alice killed Bob with her car": even though that may technically be true, it's needlessly critical. Needless from the perspective of an editorially neutral party, like a newspaper, but not from the perspective of an activist, like this website.

markstos 5y ago
Consider when a terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Christmas%20market%20killed%20with%20car https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Christmas%20market%20k... Most headlines were like "Lorry kills 12 at Christmas Market", like there was a killer truck on the loose. Here's an alternate framing of an article where a car is a fatal weapon: "Driver plows car into pedestrians at German bus stop, killing one" https://www.dw.com/en/driver-plows-car-into-pedestrians-at-german-bus-stop-killing-one/a-46822959 https://www.dw.com/en/driver-plows-car-into-pedestrians-at-g... The lead clarifies that "no assumptions should be made at this point". It's factual that a man drove a truck into a Christmas market and another person drove into a pedestrian at a bus stop. That can be reported without an assumption of guilt without re-framing the story as if the cars drove themselves.

MauranKilom 5y ago

> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike". The car physically touched the bicyclist, hence "car hits cyclist". The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist, hence "driver hits cyclist" is inaccurate. "Car hits bicycle" is accurate but not the most relevant fact to report (unless nobody was riding it at the time?). I'm not sure why this point has not been discussed in this thread. Maybe my understanding of English is insufficiently advanced, but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another, not that the car crashed into the person riding a bicycle (although this can generally be inferred from the context).

markstos 5y ago
> The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist. A headline would be used even if the car did physically touch the cyclist but hit the bike and knocked the off. Also, we don't have headlines that say "bullet shoots child", because the person shooting the gun did not physically touch the child. In some of these cases, the car is the lethal weapon, the agency of person driving the car matters. > but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another "hits" can mean "impacted" or "run into", so it's accurate here even though it's not a punch.