This may end up in the Pit, but it’s really intended to be a poll of sorts, so I figured I would start it here.
A college student was killed in a car accident. He was sitting in the back seat, not wearing a seatbelt. When the vehicle rolled, he was ejected. The driver and front seat passenger, both wearing seatbelts, escaped (relatively) unharmed. In a very nice story about the deceased student came this passage:
Is that a gratuitous “he brought it upon himself” type of passage that makes the journalist an ass? Or is that a responsible, appropriate passage that merely gives the reader a context within which to understand the circumstances?
The latter. If his not wearing a seat-belt was such a major topic for the deceased, why not quote him? He probably would’ve done, if he’d walked from this one.
I agree that it’s appropriate. The reporter isn’t offering commentary - they’re just reporting a relevant fact, especially since it offers an explanation as to why the deceased wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
I’ve been a journalist for about four years, and I agree. The deceased student went out of his way to take a public stand on an issue, and that stand essentially killed him a few months later; the journalist would have been remiss to leave it out.
Are rear-seat passengers in your state required to wear seatbelts? If not, then yes, whoever got that into print is an ass.
If the kid was required by law to wear a seatbelt in the back seat, whoever wrote that is still an ass because it was so poorly done, and because being an advocate against seatbelt laws is not relevant to the story. It is not a legitimate statement on the wisdom of his political stance. There is no opportunity for the guy to respond, nor did the paper print a response from a political ally (sp?).
Please let me note the following: The guy protested against seatbelt laws and not seatbelts per se.
“There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group.”
It was gratuitous in the article. It didn’t need to be in there. The fact that the survivors used the seat belts and he did not is on topic, but I think his outspoken stance against mandatory use of seat belts would have been more appropriate to a sidebar.
I think it’s not just appropriate but deliciously appropriate. The restraint showed by the journalist in the matter-of-fact reportage of the kid’s suicidal stupidity is admirable.
Depends on what the purpose of the story was.
If it was a story reporting a car accident death that’s what should have been reported.
If the only reason the story made the paper was because of the irony of the situation then that’s what the story was about.
You may never hear the story about a guy working at a restaurant who got locked in a freezer and froze to death.
But you probably would hear about it if he was an American Eskimo who lived in Alaska for 60 years, retired to Florida in the middle of the summer, and within a week of his arrival, got locked in a freezer and froze to death.
Whether you think the journalist was an ass or not (for the record, I think not), this is the kind of twist that reporters are always looking for. Bright young college student dies when he doesn’t wear a seatbelt - tragic. Same story, but with student a self-avowed non-wearer of seatbelts - tragic, ironic, and more memorable. I’m not sure why the OP didn’t include a link to the full story, but here it is.
Seatbelt advocate - dies in crash wearing seatbelt
Seatbelt advocate - dies in crash not wearing seatbelt
Anti-seatbelt advocate - dies in crash wearing seatbelt
Anti-seatbelt advocate - dies in crash not wearing seatbelt
Outspoken advocate of position - dies in some event related to position
I’m rather surprised that the mention of his anti-seatbelt stance wasn’t higher in the story. (I think I would have put that higher and dropped the stuff about where he went to high school and his majors and such down at the bottom.) The writer was clearly not exploiting this fact for shock value, seeing as how he buried it so far down the story that I doubt a lot of people even bothered to read that far.
The suggestion by leenmi to place that tidbit in a sidebar would only serve to draw even MORE attention to it instead of less.
The kid was young enough to have not accomplished much in life, but he got his first 7 1/2 minutes of fame being quoted as an opponent of seatbelts. He got his next 7 1/2 minutes of fame when he chose to not use them.
Had it been the headline or a major topic in the story, I’d have questioned its inclusion, but as a bit of irony-*cum[.i]-human-interest, it was fine.