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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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You know, I agree with your point after reading it but sure don't read statements about trains hitting things that way.
A train is a huge and heavy thing that takes forever to slow down, so putting someone in front of a train or being hit by a train is read as the person who created the situation causing the harm, not the train. Almost like a force of nature, trains don't hit things by choice so it is the fault of whoever put the thing in front of it that always take the blame.
Obviously other people must read it the way you pointed out. Just noting that some people see it in a way that cannot possibly blame the train due to the properties of trains.
Read the above comment again, towards the end of the first paragraph..
"Yet somehow it's the train's fault?"
I do believe that is implied sarcasm, they're well aware it's not the train's fault.
Soft, passive language where the events are technically communicated but the impact of them is lessened to the point of outright denial and absolutely no one is in any way responsible for their actions.
"Flooding kill X people" is a regular headline though, as the default is to be based on the person/thing that is acting. So flooding kills people, but people who fall into the river while boating put themselves into the situation and therefore drowned.
Things like trains that are controlled by people fall into the thing you are talking about, where there is a possibility that either person's actions could have led to the outcome. In that case they tend to default the action based on avoiding blame in headlines. An "officer involved shooting" tries to avoid blaming either person, but as you note tends to be read as excusing the officer by default which is more of a blame the victim thing. It also avoids the possibility that the officer was present but never shot their weapon as a CYA default.
For trains though, it is treated like someone who stepped in front if a car in a way that couldn't be avoided. They were struck by the car even though the impact was not caused by the car or the driver. That is because the car is the larger object that impacted a smaller object.
So I am agreeing with you that the language can imply something, but explaining that it is not always malicious intent that results in the wording we see every day. In fact, I would prefer if shootings involving police were worded as "police shot X" instead of officer involved shooting, and that vehicles/people were described as not getting out of the way of trains. But that just isn't how attempts at neutral language work.
I see your point. It's the same sort of thing for various violence around the world. Headlines like "3 die in West Bank Violence" should actually be "Israeli Soldiers Kill 3 Palestinians."
I think this also speaks to an issue around suicide. I used to work in behavioral healthcare and “suicide” is a similar issue. There’s a lot of debate around “commit suicide,” since it sort of blames the person and not the illness.
It’s hard to frame these conversations around cause of death in certain situations.
This misuse of language has irritated me for years in both media and personal life. "It" didn't do a damn thing!
This is just the way our natural grammatical structure works.
We're having a discussion about the way a person wrote a headline, and I explained that, rather than believe an elaborate conspiracy theory, you could acknowledge that this is just the way English grammatical structures work.
The alternative to "hit by a train" is going to be multiple sentences long to convey the same information. Your conspiracy theory about it being a deflection falls apart because the entire article is about how the officer is legally and ethically at fault, accepts that, and that the family understands that.
"Trapped prisoner in path of train" oddly enough, is slanted language with misleading nuances.
The wording is deliberate. "Hero cop was not assaulted by dangerous detainee"
I mean, the correct phrase here is "murdered by a cop" but you can see where the people that pay cops to murder us might object to that phrasing. They like soft language where of course everyone wishes that things had gone differently but it's also no one's fault and nothing is going to change.
Bravo. Well said!