We Need To Abolish The "Exonerative Tense" Of Headlines

[Nevilledog]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emersonmalone/police-traffic-safety-headline-language-exoneration

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When a violent crime becomes breaking news, police often are wrong, or they lie. 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.

From 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. It’s also just confusing. In the midst of a scandal, “mistakes were made” conveniently clears the air of any tangible wrongdoing. 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.”

You can expect to run into the exonerative tense like clockwork. An editor might use it in a headline (the first, and often only, part of a story a reader sees). The phrasing, some argue, can reinforce the normalcy of police violence, white supremacy, and toxic car culture. 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 exonerative tense makes a horrific incident like the murder of George Floyd appear to be tedious and insignificant. Ambiguous grammar can be insidious.

Another 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.”

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[Lovie777]

1. Lawsuit.......................

[yonder]

2. Not quite the same but related:

When a public official, wealthy person, cop, etc. is arrested and/or found to be in possession of a bunch of guns or ammo that is characterized as a collection.

However, when Bubba is pulled out of his trailer and arrested, that same collection is called an arsenal.

go figure.