So, looking at the online USA Today this morning, I came across this headline: Ga. trailer 911 caller: 'My whole family is dead!'
I clicked to the story, largely because I was hoping that I was wrong about the headline - that there's some explanation for the word "trailer" being used as an adjective in that headline that does not involve where the caller lives. I was not wrong.
USA actually characterized a 9-1-1 caller as a "Ga. trailer 911 caller" because the man happens to live in a mobile home. That's just patently offensive. What difference does it make where the man lives? If he lived in a single-family detached home, would they have said, "Ga. single-family residence 911 caller?" Is there some relevance to the fact that he lives in a trailer? I mean, yes, the crime he called about happened in a trailer, in Georgia, but the story also mentions that the mobile home is located on an old plantation with moss-draped trees, and there's a boat in the front yard. Did they say, "Ga. plantation trailer with boat in yard 911 caller?"
I think the relevant information in this story is NOT that the man lives in a trailer, but that his whole family was killed. If you want to use his 9-1-1 quote as your headline for dramatic effect, then say, "Georgia 911 caller: 'My whole family is dead!'"
The "trailer" labeling is just a way of painting this guy as some kind of hillbilly and the whole situation as some sort of backwoods dueling banjos scene. The most likely scenario is that it's drug-related - the guy had drugs on him, and generally when a whole house full of people are beaten to death, you're looking at the mob or drugs or both. But drug violence can happen just as easily in an apartment in Manhattan as in a mobile home in rural Georgia, so let's dispense with the unnecessary hillbilly characterizations.
Poor journalism, USA Today. Really poor.
3 comments:
Excellent point, Z! Does the type of residency diminish the fact his entire family is dead? I think not!
But, you clicked it, didn't you? For whatever reason, so do millions of others, quite possibly hoping to find that it was a mistake in the headline, but still.
It is all about the gimmick...and the shock factor.
Sorry, Judy - I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. As a (former at this point) journalist, I noticed the word "trailer" and was bothered by it and hoped there was something other than the obvious going on with it. But I don't believe for one minute that the majority of people clicking through to that story are doing it because of the word "trailer."
I'm not responsible for encouraging USA Today in its classicism because I viewed the story. And I'm quite sure that the millions of others who look at that story will view it because the man's whole family was killed, and that's shocking, and they want to know what happened - not because they saw the word "trailer" and had to know why it was included in the headline.
Using that word painted a seedier picture, and that may have been a gimmick, but I think it was more likely simply an accepted form of bias (it's always okay to make fun us in the South since we're all a bunch of backward hicks). And I don't believe that people wouldn't have read the story otherwise. I think the event was shocking enough to have pulled anyone in, making the classism unnecessary.
And I think I was probably in the minority in even noticing the offensive use of the word. So, yes, I clicked the story, but I am not the reason they used the word.
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