an officer killed a civilian), and the use of intransitive verbs, which, unlike transitive verbs, do not have a causal agent behind them ( to die vs. a civilian was killed by an officer), nominalization, which turns what would typically be an adjective or verb into a noun and makes the causal agent’s actions more ambiguous ( an officer-involved shooting vs. an officer killed a civilian), removing the causal agent from a sentence altogether ( a civilian was killed after a police chase vs. They considered these specific language structures: passive voice, which backgrounds the causal agent (e.g., a civilian was killed vs. “English has an active voice, a passive voice, and a secret unlockable exhonerative voice that only journalists who are describing cops and soldiers actions use,” one person tweeted last year.Ī 2022 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at how “obfuscatory language” used in TV news broadcasts about police killings between 20 affected viewers’ understanding of the story and their perceptions of police. Ambiguous grammar can be insidious.Īnother example of this semantic gymnastics: In March last year, an Alabama news outlet initially ran a story headlined “ Scottsboro officer killed, wife critically injured after shooting” before updating it to the more straightforward “ Scottsboro officer shoots wife, kills himself.” The exonerative tense makes a horrific incident like the murder of George Floyd appear to be tedious and insignificant. A news release or poorly worded article can make a violent police officer seem innocent, minimize intimate partner violence, acquit a negligent driver, and make the people at the heart of a crime curiously exempt from blame. The phrasing, some argue, can reinforce the normalcy of police violence, white supremacy, and toxic car culture. An editor might use it in a headline (the first, and often only, part of a story a reader sees). ![]() You can expect to run into the exonerative tense like clockwork. The “ past exonerative” tense, a phrase coined by political scientist William Schneider, is called that “because culpability is impossible when actions no longer exist,” Vijith Assar writes for McSweeney’s, adding that it’s “ the ultimate in passive voice.” In the midst of a scandal, “mistakes were made” conveniently clears the air of any tangible wrongdoing. Even in the best cases, the statements put out by police departments push an agenda through how they use language: the so-called past exonerative tense.įrom the copaganda marketing term “ officer-involved shooting” to the politician fave “ mistakes were made,” exonerative language deflects whose fault it is, absolving anyone of accountability and employing the passive voice to misleading ends. When a violent crime becomes breaking news, police often are wrong, or they lie. You’re all a bunch of grammar nerds and we love you for that. We pointed out how ableist language is entrenched in our vernacular, and crusaded against gendered language. We outlined why person-first language doesn’t work for everybody. We showed you how journalists can accurately write about biracial, multiracial, and mixed people. ![]() We covered why a hyphen is so significant when you’re writing about antisemitic hate. We considered how to cover climate change without being fatalistic. We looked at the subtext of the phony term “transgenderism” and its use as a patriarchal weapon to validate hate against trans people. Since then, we covered countless topics on language and grammar. It focused on grammar tips and shared a question from a colleague: “Is dick-picking ok as a verb?” Our answer: “For the act of sending dick pics (we know, we know), we went with dick-pic-ing - awkward, yes, but dick-picking is another activity entirely.” Her then–deputy copy chief, Megan Paolone, created this newsletter and sent the first issue in 2016. ![]() 4, 2014, launched by BuzzFeed’s first copy chief, Emmy Favilla. When we compiled this issue, we did not know it would be our last. This is an excerpt from Quibbles & Bits, the BuzzFeed News copy desk’s newsletter.
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