A medical examiner has determined that an Cuban migrant held in solitary confinement at an immigration detention facility in Texas died as a result of homicide.
Lot of grey area this side of libel, especially for active v passive voice.
The other one is when an underage suspect is a person of color you get “17 year old man” rather than “17 year old minor/child/student/driver/suspected victim of police brutality” etc…
this only applies if you’re a trusted news source - musk or trump could say this tomorrow and would win the case because they’re known liars. The implication here is that anyone that can legally get away with saying shit any other way is either a small potato, known liar or if its irrefutable truth.
I think in this case, specifically, they could probably say he was murdered by somebody because they already said homocide in the title
I’m not saying they’re correct in not calling it that, or that the system necessarily works that way, but they’ll have lawyers to look over everything in these sorts of scenarios and they’ll, usually, ask to play it safe.
Also, re point 2, it’s different to say “autopsy says it’s homicide” vs the paper/journalist saying that they were murdered. Unless it’s legally ruled as such (judge/court case), the news agency could be liable if they said it themselves. The headline is essentially just quoting someone else.
“died after guards held him down and he stopped breathing”
Fucks sake AP, what’s with the passive voice here? Was he holding his fucking breath??
It’s unfortunate but usually wording like that is intentional and necessary, I.E if you say “mother fuckers murdered him” you’ll get sued.
Lot of grey area this side of libel, especially for active v passive voice.
The other one is when an underage suspect is a person of color you get “17 year old man” rather than “17 year old minor/child/student/driver/suspected victim of police brutality” etc…
Mmm, I smell money. Capitalism is the problem.
A couple caveats
this only applies if you’re a trusted news source - musk or trump could say this tomorrow and would win the case because they’re known liars. The implication here is that anyone that can legally get away with saying shit any other way is either a small potato, known liar or if its irrefutable truth.
I think in this case, specifically, they could probably say he was murdered by somebody because they already said homocide in the title
I’m not saying they’re correct in not calling it that, or that the system necessarily works that way, but they’ll have lawyers to look over everything in these sorts of scenarios and they’ll, usually, ask to play it safe.
Also, re point 2, it’s different to say “autopsy says it’s homicide” vs the paper/journalist saying that they were murdered. Unless it’s legally ruled as such (judge/court case), the news agency could be liable if they said it themselves. The headline is essentially just quoting someone else.