Bad Reporting

[dallen68]

This may not be a "talking point", but there really is no other place to put it and I doubt it's worthy of it's own thing, as it's merely a passing thought. Anyways, on facebook some of us were talking about Fergusen and Shane mentioned passive voice. It occurs to me that sometimes journalists write this way so as to not color public opinion ahead of the trial.

For example, if I say: "Shane shot Travis with a baretta,"  I'm potentially contaminating Shane's chances of an impartial trial, because I've essentially convicted Shane in a trial of the press. But if I say, "Travis was shot, and Shane was arrested at the scene, while holding a baretta," I did not comment on Shane's guilt or innocence, just reported the facts.  I'm just saying the reason for it may not be to absolve the police of guilt.

[MrBogosity]

This may not be a "talking point", but there really is no other place to put it and I doubt it's worthy of it's own thing, as it's merely a passing thought. Anyways, on facebook some of us were talking about Fergusen and Shane mentioned passive voice. It occurs to me that sometimes journalists write this way so as to not color public opinion ahead of the trial.

For example, if I say: "Shane shot Travis with a baretta,"  I'm potentially contaminating Shane's chances of an impartial trial, because I've essentially convicted Shane in a trial of the press. But if I say, "Travis was shot, and Shane was arrested at the scene, while holding a baretta," I did not comment on Shane's guilt or innocence, just reported the facts.  I'm just saying the reason for it may not be to absolve the police of guilt.

The problem is the inconsistent way they do it. If I'm a civilian, they'll just say something like "Shane allegedly shot Travis" or "Shane is suspected of shooting Travis." If I'm a policeman, they'll say stuff like, "Shane arrived at the scene, and Travis was shot" or "Shane went up to Travis and an officer-involved shooting occurred." It has nothing to do with avoiding a direct accusation; they have all sorts of ways of doing that. It has to do with removing the police as the subject of the sentence. And as I showed in a recent video, they even do it when there's no crime and nothing at all to really blame the police for:

[yt]-x7aCw1-rd8[/yt]

[dallen68]

The problem is the inconsistent way they do it. If I'm a civilian, they'll just say something like "Shane allegedly shot Travis" or "Shane is suspected of shooting Travis." If I'm a policeman, they'll say stuff like, "Shane arrived at the scene, and Travis was shot" or "Shane went up to Travis and an officer-involved shooting occurred." It has nothing to do with avoiding a direct accusation; they have all sorts of ways of doing that. It has to do with removing the police as the subject of the sentence. And as I showed in a recent video, they even do it when there's no crime and nothing at all to really blame the police for:

[yt]-x7aCw1-rd8[/yt]

You have a point there, and again I didn't intend to start a whole thing on this, but in a way "Shane ALLEGEDLY shot Travis" is even worse because now the alleging is the active verb (alleged by whom?)... Suspected by whom? Unless otherwise stated, it would be the person making the statement.  So it would literally be "David (presuming I'm the reporter) alleges Shane shot Travis" or "David suspects Shane of shooting Travis". [And the readership goes "who the fuck cares what David thinks"] The point being that now neither the shooting nor the shooter nor the shootee are the point of the sentence, the alleging is, or suspecting.

[dallen68]

You know what, I changed my mind. I think maybe this *is* a topic worthy of serious discussion. If you could move the last 3 posts to a new thread called "bad reporting", that would be great. Then we could all post things from journalists not doing there damn job properly. I think it's common enough that we could have quite a bit of fun with it.

[MrBogosity]

You know what, I changed my mind. I think maybe this *is* a topic worthy of serious discussion. If you could move the last 3 posts to a new thread called "bad reporting", that would be great. Then we could all post things from journalists not doing there damn job properly. I think it's common enough that we could have quite a bit of fun with it.

Done!

And I think we all know who's doing the alleging: police and prosecutors. So that only strengthens my point.