FAIR (7/11/16, 3/30/17) has noted media’s use of vague or passive-voice framing to obfuscate police wrongdoing, but a recent example by Miami CBS affiliate WFOR (4/3/17) stood out as an extreme case:
After a cop was arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife, CBS Miami’s headline was “Miami-Dade Police Officer Arrested After Wife Ends Up in Hospital”—suggesting that the arrest and the hospital visit might be entirely unrelated. An officer was arrested and, on a totally separate note, his wife “ended up” in a hospital.
The article’s text was somehow worse, with one passage in particular tied up in knots:
Once back in the car with Bradley, his wife confronted him about the video which led to a violent argument.
The argument turned physical, according to the report, and Officer Bradley’s wife received serious injuries to her face area.
These two sentences are almost a parody of how to bend words in the service of power. Note how Bradley’s wife (the victim) is to blame for “confront[ing] him,” which “led to a violent argument,” apparently by no one’s volition. Indeed, it was “the argument” that “turned physical”—not Bradley, who, despite having been arrested, is never described doing anything, much less anything violent.
Instead, Bradley’s wife “received serious injuries,” as one receives guests while hosting a party. Who inflicted those injuries on her “face area” is never stated.
Contrast this with a headline from the same outlet a few weeks earlier, over a story by the same reporter, that clearly assigned blame and causality: “Men Posing as Police Bust Into NW Miami-Dade Home & Rob Family at Gunpoint” (2/17/17). That makes a lot more sense than “Men Wanted After Family Ends Up With Items Stolen.”
The use of vague or passive voice framing to muddy the waters on police guilt is used most commonly, as FAIR (7/11/16) has pointed out before, in the bizarre phrase “officer-involved shooting,” employed by beat reporters everywhere.
“Scene of the #Flagstaff officer involved shooting — no officers hurt and suspect is dead,” CBS Flagstaff’s Charly Edsitty tweeted. A terribly inefficient way of saying “police shot and killed someone,” a statement that is value-agnostic as to whether or not the shooting was justified, while still clearly stating who did what to whom.
Houston CBS affiliate KHOU (7/9/16) would do one better with the confounding headline, “Man Killed After Officer-Involved Shooting in SE Houston.” The man in question was not killed “after” the shooting, he was killed by the shooting. Nor was the shooting simply “officer-involved”; it was done by an officer. A simple edit job reveals how much work goes into these sentences to obscure who the active party is:
The habit is common in reporting on the US military as well. The New York Times, as FAIR (10/5/15) noted at the time, headlined a story about the Pentagon bombing a hospital in Afghanistan with “US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital.” The passive voice separates the United States from the act of bombing, with bombs simply hitting in rhetorical proximity to blame being leveled. Imagine, if you will, the headline “Al-Qaeda Is Blamed After Planes Hit Twin Towers”
“US-Led Coalition Confirms Strikes Hit Mosul Site Where Civilians Died” read another New York Times headline. The United States didn’t kill civilians; it led a coalition that confirmed that strikes hit a site where civilians happened to have died, possibly in an unrelated manner.
The Washington Post goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid depicting a famous president as a child rapist.
Listing two events in succession while glossing over how they are connected is a frequent rhetorical sleight-of hand, insulating wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions. An account in the Washington Post (3/17/17) of Sally Hemings, who was held as a slave by Thomas Jefferson, contained this curious passage:
When Hemings was 14, she was assigned to accompany Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter, Maria, to France, where Jefferson was serving as American envoy. According to Hemings’ son Madison Hemings, at 16, Sally was pregnant with Jefferson’s child, a son who didn’t live long.
Hemings, a 14-year-old child, was “accompanying Jefferson,” then magically got “pregnant with Jefferson’s child.” How we got from A to B is never spelled out, probably because acknowledging that a famous president had raped a child would make a large number of Post readers uncomfortable.
Muddied or needlessly complex writing is often a red flag that a writer wants to describe an event without assigning guilt or provoking a negative response. Its frequent use in describing the misdeeds of police, the US military and revered national figures provides just one more example of how writers–even if subconsciously–internalize the public relations concerns of those in power.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can find him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Wordplay into the hands of the powerful
This is the protective fragmentation of experience. What does it protect? “Internalize the public relations concerns of those in power” is well said.
A result is that those whose diet contains too high a percentage of that selective fragmentation training, actually learn how to give away their intelligence. This goes along with public discourse being about who shall be blamed and who shall be excused. Thorough explanation is impossible. The 9-11 commission had a fight about listing Al-Qaeda’s stated reasons for the attack. After my call to a talk show and said the decades of U.S. policies had contributed to antagonism in the Middle east and that better policies would help, the host told the audience that I was one of those who believed that if we just changed our policies those who were planning attacks would all become friendly and peaceable. So filled with harsh blame for some (and worship-deference for others) that balance — and therefore good decisions — are hardly possible.
Brilliant reporting. And hysterical. I’m reaching David Macaray levels of guffawing over here. But not laughing at the facts. Laughing at your uncovering of them.
It might be noted that Al Qaeda’s grievances with the West were bin Laden’s. While I disagree with bin Laden’s methods. I share his grievances. Which were fundamentally three: that the US stations infidel troops in the Holy Lands of Mecca and Medina; the US supports the apartheid state of Israel visiting upon Palestine the same tyranny the Jews themselves were on as wrong an end in the Nazi Warsaw ghetto; and that the US spends a vast disproportion of resources on its military. None of which accounts for the fact Al Qaeda – and bin Laden – was largely a creation of the US national (in)security state. To provoke the Soviet bogeyman’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. And to fight against the atheist infidels. Does anyone really believe that slaughtering civilians by the thousands? And engendering refugees hither and yon in the tens of millions, some how makes us safer?
Thank you for your great coverage! This is an important issue, and the use of weasel-y language to avoid assigning responsibility reflects a deep immorality. Nonetheless, there’s no need to misinform your readers about grammar. Most of the sentences you describe don’t use the passive voice at all. “Wife ends up at hospital” is grammatically active. So is “the argument turned physical” and “wife received injuries.” In fact, in this context, only the last sentence can be passivized, but it would have to be “injuries were received by his wife,” which no one would ever write, no matter how weasel-y they wanted to be.
Describe the writing as muddled or needlessly obscure, point out the moral failings that the authors’ choices reflect, but don’t give your readers inaccurate information about grammar.
Presumably you’re of the Hitlerian school of lying. If you’re going to lie go big. The bigger the lie, the more likely to be believed. I hardly think Johnson is referring to the grammatical passive voice. So much as he was, as a careful reader might have noted he himself reported, shedding light on the sleight of hand of pinning responsibility in some vague Neverland of high expectations.
Seems kinda nit-picky, Josephine. Seems like you’re either missing the point or trying to obfuscate it.
How does it seem that way, TeeJae? I specifically said first and foremost that the issue here is the moral failings of most of our common news sources. But we, as people who want clearer reporting, don’t need to spread grammatical falsehoods to get out point across. Would you advocate spreading other kinds of misinformation if it helps an argument?
If anything, I’d say this undermines our argument. I can readily imagine someone who doesn’t agree with the point of the article writing it off because of this type of error. It also gives the writers who come up with these kind of sentences an easy out. If we say the problem with their language is that it’s passive, they’ll just write obscure active sentences like “Bus blows up” when a bus was bombed by a state power or “black man ends up shot” when the police killed him.
We should say what we mean. Our complaint with these sentences has nothing to do with grammar; it has everything to do with immoral, power-serving obfuscation.
If the New York Times, or any other media outlet, came out with an editorial tomorrow that said “One job we see as part of our core mission is to describe the actions of authority in ways that signal we are on their side, and which help make them appealing to the public at large. This is especially true for any action by the US Security State” how does that change our current reality from where it is today?
The main change would be the explicit admission. What other change would go along with that? Anything?
June 16, 2016 Supreme Court Ruling: Police Have No Duty to Protect the General Public
However, did you know that the government, and specifically law enforcement, does not have any duty to protect the general public? Based on the headline and this information, you might assume this is a new, landmark decision. However, it has long been the court’s stance that, essentially, the American people are responsible for taking case of their own personal safety.
http://tribunist.com/news/supreme-court-ruling-police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-general-public/
Aug 21, 2016 Just Say No: Don’t Federalize Local Police!
Some people want you to think that the solution to problems with police is to get the federal government more involved. But they’ve got things completely backwards.
https://youtu.be/H0euUoxPIp8
People need to seriously message the corporate media and ask them what one Senator said to McCarthy “have you no decency?”. Thanks again FAIR and the great writings of Adam Johnson pointing out the airbrushing of crimes by the state and wow! that thing about Jefferson whoa! that blows my mind hehe! (uncomfortable laugh).