A pediatric doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was killed while riding her bike in Center City on Wednesday night.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/deadly-3-car-crash-rittenhouse-philadelphia/3915690/
The original post on the Philadelphia subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/comments/1e5wkv0/insane_accident_on_18th_and_spruce/
The use of passive voice in the first sentence does a lot of work shifting blame away from the driver and the car centric systems in an “objective” effort.
How about:
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
They’re both active voice, they just have different verbs.
Yep, high school grammar 101. It isn’t that journalists don’t know this, it is how they are trained. Shift obvious blame away from parties for objectivity until a verdict or deference to the status quo.
“Car driver kills doctor on bicycle”
“Car driver kills children’s doctor on bicycle”
While I agree with the car centric aspect of this, you should read the article. The top bullets are more specific, and the driver may have had a medical incident.