The passive voice in the news: anything but passive
Commenter Tatterdemalian calls my attention to this AP news item.
Take a look. Take a good look.
It’s a well-known fact that many newspaper readers only peruse the headlines, and this one–“Rockets hit Lebanon despite cease fire”–would lead one to believe that Israel had fired rockets at Lebanon in violation of the cease fire. Wouldn’t it?
The first paragraph–“Tens of thousands of Lebanese jammed bomb-cratered roads Monday as they returned to still-smoldering scenes of destruction after a tenuous cease-fire ended 34 days of vicious combat between Israel and Hezbollah”–is devoted to the destruction the Lebanese people have suffered. It’s only in the second paragraph that the writer reveals what the headline refers to, which is the fact that the rockets fired “despite cease fire,” the ones that fell short of their targets in Israel and landed in south Lebanon, were fired by Hezbollah.
The use of the passive voice in this headline is far from an isolated instance, and is emblematic of the rot that has taken over news services such as the AP and Reuters. And don’t for a moment think that the passive voice would have been used if it had been the Israelis doing the firing.
[In case you’ve missed all the studies that show consistent MSM bias in its coverage of the Middle East, here’s one.]
[CORRECTION: Those who wrote that the headline is not in the passive voice are correct. The problem with the headline is that the rockets are considered the actor rather than those who launched them. Thus the true actor is disguised, and it’s left to the reader to fill in the blanks, which most would naturally do by assuming the actor was Israel.]
That headline is in the active voice, not the passive voice. The passive voice would be “Lebanon hit by rockets.”
I think what your objecting to is using “rockets” as the subject of the sentence rather than whoever fired the rockets. If that’s so, then it’s the word choice that should be criticized, not the voice.
Considering Israel was the aggressor from day one. And Hezbollah was created by the CIA. (Do a Google Search.) Why care? Because the Bush Administration HELPED Israel start this ILLEGAL WAR? Or is it because Israel wants to expand its boarders?
The MSM is controlled by the neos. And Israel is the neos baby. Don’t feed me lies about the MSM badmouthing Israel. Mainstream Media is ruining our Democracy. And kissing up to Israel every chance they get…
Get honest. Get real.
I can see that this Website is Pro Israel. And Pro Neo.
I am reminded of an AP story that I blogged about three years ago. Lede? “The federal judge whose majority opinion sent an important affirmative action case to the Supreme Court improperly intervened in the appeal, a colleague said in an internal review that did not recommend any punishment….” Headline? “Judge Reviewed in Affirmative Action Case”.
Geez. ANOTHER sock puppet?
stumbley: I’m in the process of considering instituting a different comments system. Once again, it will be a while before it’s implemented, if I decide to make the change. I counsel patience.
Neo Neocon, what do you think Israel can and should do about this asymmetrical media/mechanized war?
My solution is of course sourced from the Peloponessian War, where athens and Sparta faced off.
We’re Sparta, our enemies are Athens.
Well Neo, it would be better if you put down iron hard rules. If people don’t face discipline or think “warnings” are fake, they will misbehave.
Human behavior is controlled by punishment and warnings of punishment.
Blackfive handles it pretty well, I believe. He is like you, most of the time he allows people to say what they want, minus some edits. However, when some cross the line, he gives warning, then bans. He only had to do this twice in all, so the system must work for him. His being a milblog, might even surpass yours as the neo-con blog in terms of potential for gathering peculiar people ; )
“It may be supposition on the writer’s part and he/she may not have known at the time that the rockets were fired at an Israeli mechanized armour emplacement on Lebanese soil.”
No, I’m pretty sure they were not. Hezbollah knows full well Katyushas would be completely ineffective against Israeli armor, even if they could hit a tank with them. Heck, the rockets frequently missed Israel completely and hit the West Bank instead.
Maybe you should try claiming it was really Mossad infiltrators in Lebanon firing the missiles instead. Makes your heroic freedom fighters look slightly less incompetant, am I right?
“Considering Israel was the aggressor from day one”
Excuse me? Is that a misprint or is that what you actually meant to say with a perfectly straight face?
Good luck neo….the lunatic trolls are surely taking over the compound.
“It may be supposition on the writer’s part and he/she may not have known at the time that the rockets were fired at an Israeli mechanized armour emplacement on Lebanese soil.”
Right, cause in no way would the Hezbo’s ever contemplate random rocket attacks of Israeli population centers.
So, justa, how would you write the headline where an explosive vest worn by a ten year old kid is discovered after it fails to explode?
Gee Heyman (Haman?), you’ve finally discovered that this website is by and for conservatives. How long did it take you to discover that. This is ours. The MSM is yours.
And Hezbollah was created by the CIA.
Sooner or later the anti-war crowd always comes up with this cherished meme. Mention any nefarious group or individual and you will shortly have someone show up and stoutly declare them the ‘creation’ of America.
Stalin? The US ‘caused’ him. Pol Pot? Ditto. Saddam, Osama, al Qaeda, etc., the US ‘created’ them. Hezbollah, Hamas? That’s right – created by America.
These organizations and individuals are seen as mere toys of the US gone awry; empty instruments with no will of their own filled with bloodlust by US actions and set on their murderous paths by the US.
Did anyone see where I put my barf-bag?
So, Hamas was the creation of the Mossad and the Hezbo’s were the creation of the CIA.
The GWOT is going to be damned near impossible to fight due to deep divisions and mistrust among the very same people that should be united in fighting this thing.
Nobody trusts the MSM. We know why we do. The left doent think it goes far enough in exposing Bush/America/Zionism for the evil they believe it is. Truth is relative to your ideological viewpoint and as you can see, the left and right cannot agree with events current or past.
Much of the left seems to have rationalized barbarity and few of their elected leaders or any other responsible adult other than maybe Joe Lieberman has the will to do anything other than jockey themselves in a position that looks best at election time or get them on the cover of People magazine.
Last week they threw Joe under the bus.
This doesnt just happen “over there”. Islam has more than a toe hold in liberal western democracies. Some try to assimilate into society, others are here to incite hatred of the very same societies that protect their right to practice their religion.
That the reverse is not only very rarely true, but punishable by death in some Islamic countries, seems to be lost on the left or at least explained away as not really being much of a problem.
I see this getting much worse before it gets any better.
What do you guys think?
(Neo-conns only please, I already know what the ‘progressives’ think.)
Harry writes: This doesnt just happen “over there”. Islam has more than a toe hold in liberal western democracies. Some try to assimilate into society, others are here to incite hatred of the very same societies that protect their right to practice their religion.
That the reverse is not only very rarely true, but punishable by death in some Islamic countries, seems to be lost on the left or at least explained away as not really being much of a problem.
The funny thing is, some of the very Islamic governments which do not allow freedom of religion, are the ones that our government is supporting, and in fact is a close ally of. The Saudi government for example.
Why is our government supporting the Saudi monarchy which does not allow freedom of religion, and oppresses women? (Women are not allowed to vote or drive cars under the Saudi monarchy).
So, when we criticize “Islamic fascists” for their intolerance, many in the Muslim world think that we are being hypocritical, because we do in fact support one brand of Islamic fascists — the Saudi rulers!
They also see that the Saudi monarchs make sure that the oil spigots are turned on so that we keep getting our regular fix of oil.
So, they conclude that in spite of our lip-service to “freedom”, what we really care about is “oil”.
We need to become the moral nation that we used to be once upon a time, and we need to stop supporting tyrants.
“THE REAL TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS, AS YOU AND I KNOW, THAT A FINANCIAL ELEMENT IN THE LARGER CENTERS HAS OWNED THE GOVERNMENT EVER SINCE THE DAYS OF ANDREW JACKSON.”
Hmmm, I just don’t know that you are trying to say, Justaguy. Why don’t you just come out and say it?
Josh G is right. The sentence is in the active voice. The problem is the “disguised actor.”
Why is our government supporting the Saudi monarchy which does not allow freedom of religion, and oppresses women? (Women are not allowed to vote or drive cars under the Saudi monarchy).
The criteria for alliance is not how women or other religions are treated within the borders of an ally. The criteria is that the state not sponsor terrorism and the Saudis kill a lot of terrorists. The US encourages liberalization among its allies but does not force it – to force it would be Imperialistic.
Adam:
“We need to become the moral nation that we used to be once upon a time, and we need to stop supporting tyrants.”
You mean back when we had supported Stalin against Hitler? That moral?
I cant believe Im discussing morality with someone who thinks Hezbollah is a benevolent organization in the first place.
If we were really just “all about the oil”, we could have just installed a government solely of our choosing without elections (in which women voted), in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Something Im sure you were going to mention as an example of the US promoting something worthwhile but simply slipped your mind.
If we cant get liberals to change their “perceptions” of what our intentions are, how would we convince the ‘Arab street’ of this?
If your so worried about doing whats morally right, you can start by recognizing that relativism and equivocation, apology and appeasement are immoral.
Its time for you to stand up.
The “moral nation that we used to be” never existed in the first place. The moonbats are still chasing an imaginary utopia that never existed and never can exist in the real world. The closest any nation can come to it is to create a facade of paradise over a totalitarian police state, and once the skin breaks and the flyblown core of those nations is exposed for all to see, the moonbats simply say, “Well, it didn’t work in that case because they didn’t try hard enough.”
Difference between Saudy Arabia and Iran is difference between facsism and nazism. Facsists have no interest in radical rearangment of the whole world to some messianistic ideal, they want only rule their own nation-state and keep order they choose. Most of barbarisms and crimes assotiated with so-called “facsism” were realy commited by Nazi. They have monopoly on mass murder, genocide and rule of terror. Facsists were their allies, of course, but very non-effective and reluctant at that. It is understandable why soviet propaganda pefer to call nazi “facsists” – to avoid parallels between “national socialism” and international socialism of their own. But for what purpouse even conservative western comentators do the same substitusion? All arab countries are facsist – non-tolerant, autocratic, repressive; but only Baath (Syrian and Iraqi), Hamas and Hezbolla and (non-arab) Iran are true NAZI states and movements. Only they are clear and immediate danger to USA and West. That is how I see it from Moscow.
I see this getting much worse before it gets any better. What do you guys think?
I think about the same as Harry. The enemy has many advantages, one being absolute dedication to the point of obsession. As the MSM is presently constituted, the enemy will always have a propaganda advantage, even I think up to the point to where the sword descends on their necks in the looming Caliphate. The enemy has oil with which to manipulate economies. The enemy is underrated as far as adroitness in foreign affairs is concerned and usually out-maneuvers their Western counterparts. The enemy is not hampered by considerations of truth, morality or mercy. Anything goes, including using their own babies in suicide bombings.
Our one advantage: Weaponry technology, but this advantage will fall away in a few short years.
Passive Voice Genocide
By Jason Maoz
JewishPress.com | August 3, 2005
The day after a recent Netanya suicide bombing, this is how The New York Times headlined its story: “Suicide Bomber and 2 Women Die in Attack at Mall in Israeli Town.” Talk about imprecise language and fuzzy imagery. Were the suicide bomber and the two women killed by a swarm of killer bees? Shot by Israeli police? Felled by simultaneous heart attacks? Were the women perchance accomplices of the bomber?
Would not a more literate – certainly a more accurate – headline have read, “Suicide Bomber Kills Two Women in Attack at Mall in Israeli Town”? It seems that if the Times can’t paint a particular news story in the pale pastels of moral equivalence, the next best thing is to come up with a headline written in what grammarians call the passive voice, in this case lumping a terrorist together with his victims, all three of whom are described as having simply died.
Lest anyone accuse the Monitor of quibbling, consider what language expert Marylaine Block has to say about the use and abuse of the passive voice in writing: “It permits us to sanitize horrendous actions and make them more acceptable. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ sounds so much less brutal than ‘forcing them out of their homes, raping them, putting them in concentration camps, and murdering them.'”
In a telling illustration, Block points out that “‘the Jewish Question’ was a freely debated intellectual issue in the twenties and thirties (and still a valid Library of Congress subject heading as late as 1978). The ‘Jewish Question,’ let us not forget, was whether Jews should be allowed to live. (Note the passive voice. By whom?)”
Block constructs a progression of statements to show “how euphemism and the passive voice have helped give Holocaust denial an aura of intellectual respectability:
“1. The Nazis systematically exterminated 6 million Jews and everybody else they considered defective.
“2. Six million Jews were killed during World War II.
“3. Six million Jews died during World War II.
“4. It is alleged that 6 Million Jews died….”
Yes, I am aware that the Times article obviously went on to tell a more detailed story than was possible in a mere headline, but to a casual reader or skimmer the damage was done before the eyes continued on to the smaller, non-bold text below the byline.
Want some more news as the Times sees fit to print it? A July 21 article by Israel correspondent Greg Myre titled “Israel Defeats Efforts to Delay Gaza Pullout; Protest Thwarted Again” started off with the lead paragraph offering a brief elaboration of the headline. Then suddenly, in the second paragraph, like a news flash interrupting previously scheduled programming, the focus shifted to an entirely different story: “Late on Wednesday, Reuters reported that a Palestinian boy had been stabbed to death by Israelis in the West Bank, citing reports from unidentified Palestinians.”
Th
What do you guys think?
(Neo-conns only please, I already know what the ‘progressives’ think.)
harry | 08.17.06 – 12:49 am | #
I’m progressive, after all I’m willing to progress towards the nuclear option aren’t I? Doesn’t that make me progressive?
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