Does it matter what kind of officer?
And by kind, I mean male or female. If an officer is threatened by a guy with two knives then whoever you are, if you shoot at him, I think it’s ok as long as they aren’t plastic party knives.
Why do we need to know that right in the headline, KGW? KATU mentioned it but it wasn’t the headline. Same with KPTV. (I couldn’t find it on KOIN’s site at all.)
Does it matter? Will people be willing to “let it slide” since it was a girl? I think this falls in the same category as headlines like “Man hoisted by own petard” vs “Black man hoisted by own petard”. Why does it matter? Because “White man hoisted by own petard” would never be a headline. It doesn’t tell me anything useful about the story does it?
Unless there has been some sort of editorial decree and now you are going to label EVERY police story “Male officer” this and “Female officer” that, then stop. In fact, not only stop, but update the headline on your site. It’s a website, you can make that kind of change. I mean, really-it’s not relevant to the story, and let’s be honest, it’s probably going to color the judgment of some people by telling them the person involved was female most importantly, THEN an officer. I think any member of the police force anywhere will tell you they are officers first and foremost.
UPDATE: My pre-caffeinated coding completely missed the link I had to former Metblogger Aaron’s post on this very same subject.
Actually, it does matter.
Headlines, being what they are, require a certain amount of assuming on the part of the headline writer and the headline reader. Often shortcuts are used in order to get the story across in the 3 to 9 words that most headlines are written to.
These “shortcuts” are varied, but commonly, when it comes to people, what’s actually being relied upon are stereotypes. When you’re writing a headline with little room for the full facts, an editor must decide what are the most important facts and what will give the most accurate description of the article.
The majority of readers, across genders, races, communities will assume that if someone says “a police officer” that a white, male, some-what agressive person is being referred to.
(Side Note: This is a broad generalization that should not stand in place of a particular person/event/etc. Stereotypes are used by humans for a reason: it allows them to capture wider swaths of information more quickly. The problem comes when there is a mismatch between the collection of that information, the weighting of that stereotype’s reliability, and the action taken from there.)
Given the assumption of the stereotype by the editor, it may be important to the story to break some part of that stereotype in order to frame the story more accurately.
6 years of writing headlines, this is one of the two things I learned.
The other? Don’t get carried away with alliteration: “Boat Battle Bodes Barrage of Barbs”
.r.
Thanks for flagging our kgw.com headline on the officer-involved shooting.
We agree gender wasn’t the most important part of this story, and in our updated report have removed that reference from the headline.
Frank Mungeam
Site Manager, kgw.com
Frank,
I already followed up with you privately, but I wanted to let the world know too:
Thank you SO much for the update and for reading Metroblogging Portland. We’re happy to have you and I will gladly buy you a beverage of your choice at the next meetup.