Convenient Uses of the Passive Voice, and Other Tricks to be Aware of While Consuming Corporate Media

How media practices slow down the dismantling of white supremacy

Last Wednesday, the New York Times summarized the night-time, back-roads death of a Black man, a 49-year-old barber named Ronald Greene — who, when he finally expired from numerous and savage injuries, was surrounded by “at least six” white cops — like this:

“Relatives were initially told that he had died [on May 10, 2019] from injuries he sustained in a crash after he failed to stop for a traffic violation outside Monroe, Louisiana, according to a lawyer for the family.”

Ronald Greene, AUBM (Another Unarmed Black Man) killed by Louisiana Troopers the night of May 10, 2019. More than two years later, the traffic violation he was allegedly stopped for remains “unspecified”.

In their use of the passive voice (relatives were told), the Times fails to tell us who lied to Greene’s family about how he died. We are then expected — again passive voice; in the active voice, it’s: The New York Times expects us — to assume the obvious: the police lied to the family.

Good reasons exist for the widespread use of the passive voice. But because it leaves out who did the action, the passive voice is often a convenient way for police departments to cover up misconduct, and for corporate media to restrain efforts to strengthen or to create accountability, and to reduce however gradually the widespread culture of impunity on the part of those entrusted to protect and serve.

Another ubiquitous tactic is overuse of the stock-phrase according to a lawyer for the family. As here, the phrase creates the impression that the veracity of these events is still up in the air, or unproven. (In fact, the number and the depth of the lies numerous agents of the Louisiana State Troopers told are incontrovertible, thanks in large part to police body camera footage, whose release was only forced earlier this month, more than two years after these sad and brutal events.) That phrase — according to the family’s lawyer — is practically devoid of significant meaning. Still worse and more importantly, the phrase sows doubt in readers’ minds (where none need no longer exist) about the events of the night Greene was so savagely murdered by a gang of out-of-control cops.

More than two years later, cops and journalists alike continue to describe the traffic…