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Amazing. @BlackPressMedia manages to pen one of the worst headlines ever. The actual article, published by multiple outlets, says the injured person was in an intersection and was taken to hospital. There's no excuse for headlines like this. https://www.oakbaynews.com/news/pedestrian-struck-at-sidney-intersection-slows-morning-traffic
While this example is particularly bad, media coverage that downplays the role of drivers is a huge problem. Coverage like this hides the huge human cost of unsafe roads. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-10/why-news-coverage-of-car-crashes-favors-drivers
This article points out one situation where news coverage tends not to obscure the driver's role and deny the victim's identity: drunk driving. So media knows how to cover crashes (not "accidents"), they just choose not to: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/03/28/how-coverage-of-pedestrian-fatalities-dehumanizes-victims-and-absolves-drivers/
And this is not just a bunch of "advocates" griping. The language used to describe crashes has a direct effect on how people perceive what happened. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198219300727
What I hope is that better media organizations, like @BlackPressMedia, change to adopt the active tense, assign agency, leave out victim blaming, and provide context (e.g., “this was the tenth fatal collision this year”). It's better journalism and it will save lives.
