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<\/p>\nOur headlines are currently riddled with selective uses of the passive voice. Passive voice means that it isn’t clear who is doing the deeds mentioned. “Headlines are… riddled” rather than “Journalists are riddling the headlines,” for example, is passive instead of active. Because it’s passive, there’s no one responsible for the action.<\/p>\n
As history unfolds, this might feel like the safer choice, because without agency, taking a stance isn’t possible. Moreover, the use of the passive voice may be strategic in journalism, rather than ethical, because if our headlines were more active, they might more actively ignite or alienate readers.<\/p>\n
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But the passive voice of the news has recently become its own news. Take a tweet from Emily Pothast, who accuses the New York Times of \u201cletting that passive voice do a lot of heavy lifting as usual\u201d:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/emilypothast\/status\/1393593088229003264<\/p>\n
At the time of writing, this post received nearly 100k likes, which must near a sort of record for social media on syntax. It also received nearly 20k retweets, including many threads on active vs. intransitive verbs (which are verbs that are not exactly passive, but which do not take a direct object). One commentator mentions that \u201chave died\u201d lacks an agent and is thus intransitive, and the comments to follow take apart distinctions between intransitive and passive verbs, rather than engaging in the more pressing question of \u201cwho is the agent?\u201d or more precisely: \u201cwho made the children die\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n Here’s a series of recent headlines from Israeli newspapers. See if you can find the most active verbs:<\/p>\n Israel Demolished Tower Blocks in Gaza. Here’s What They House<\/a><\/p>\n (Haaretz, 18 May)<\/p>\n Gaza Lives Erased: Israel Is Wiping Out Entire Families on Purpose<\/a><\/p>\n (Haaretz, 18 May)<\/p>\n Rocket fire returns to south after 5-hour lull; IDF fells drone in Jordan border area<\/a><\/p>\n (Yediot Acharonot, 18 May)<\/p>\n IDF twice tried, failed to kill Hamas military chief during current conflict<\/a><\/p>\n (Times of Israel, 18 May)<\/p>\n If you guessed one and two in the above headlines, you are right.<\/p>\n The most active phrases are: \u201cIsrael demolished\u201d; \u201cIsrael is Wiping Out Entire Families on Purpose.\u201d In these examples, we have a clear agent (Israel) and acts: \u201cdemolished\u201d; \u201cwiping out.” We don’t need to discuss their syntax, because their narratives are clear. However \u201cLives erased\u201d is a phrase that obscures the eraser, as does \u201cRocket fire returns\u2026\u201d the rocketeer. Agents hide in passive verbs.<\/p>\n In many recent Arabic headlines, blame is interestingly assigned via the passive voice. In the May 18 lead headline on Al Jazeera the statement reads: \u201cIsrael\u2019s barrage of airstrikes resumes, toppling buildings<\/a>.\u201d Perhaps surprisingly, the \u201cbarrage\u201d is made passive in a way that seems to be engaging in more objective journalistic tone, but \u201ctoppling\u201d negates it.<\/p>\n Indeed, the main agent is made passive even in Lebanon. \u201cStrike from Gaza kills 2 as Israel topples building<\/a>,\u201d reads the small but mainstream Lebanese English newspaper The Daily Star (possibly syndicated from Politico<\/a>). In the first half of this headline, the \u201cStrike\u201d is the agent of \u201ckilling,\u201d leaving a real agent missing, whereas in the second half, the actor, \u201cIsrael\u201d clearly topples.<\/p>\n In the American Fox News version of this story, \u201cIsrael launches new airstrikes, responds to rockets from Lebanon, as Biden\u2019s suggested cease-fire flops,\u201d an alliteration in the end leaves us searching for an agent. What happened exactly? The agent was \u201cIsrael\u201d but their action was \u201claunching\u201d rather than \u201ctoppling\u201d or, as the Washington Post more clearly writes, in the present tense, \u201ckill[ing].\u201d To complicate the already complicated headline, it was revised to “Israel-Gaza Conflict continues to intensify call for cease fire, rockets reported from Lebanon<\/a>“. This headline suffers from an incomplete sentence, a run on compound phrase, and no clear agent. It also barely offers any actions, apart from the “reporting” of rockets “from Lebanon.” Did someone in Lebanon fire a rocket? Or has someone in Lebanon reported a rocket? The grammar of the headline exhausts its reader searching for meaning, before the story is even read.<\/p>\n Letting language distract us from the horrors overseas can be illuminating. After all, we are taught in schools to use an active voice, ubiquitous software<\/a> tries to enforce use of active voice, as does journalism, in theory.<\/p>\n As presenter for AJ News, Sana Saeed<\/a>, affirms in a recent tweet responding to Ken Silverstein\u2019s frustration with the New York Times:<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever worked w\/ a good copy editor&senior editor, then you know that they will push for active voice. <\/p>\n Weird how some of the top newsrooms, ostensibly with excellent talent esp on grammar & syntax, keep pushing out passive headlines about Palestinians killed by Israel. https:\/\/t.co\/wweaEfUtNd<\/a><\/p>\n — Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) May 14, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n