I don’t know who started this, but I always feel frustrated when I see headline along the lines of “USA says” or “China signal”, countries are not people.
I don’t understand why don’t even the best news outlets put headlines like " Official x said this on official order on USA" Or something like that.
I really don’t understand who came up with this way of reporting where they report on officials as their country and I always thought that this is dumb.
Your word of the day is “synecdoche”.
Countries do make official statements and individual officials in a government can be understood to be speaking on behalf of a nation.
But in that case they would be better reported as " Country X said in official statement " Or “Official Z speaking on behalf of country Y, said”
Right?
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If the statement is an official one why does it matter who delivered it?
It’s more factually correct and better representative of the situation.
Just because official X said that, does not mean that the whole country is ok with him.
Citzens and politicians should be separated to keep emotions outside of this.
Let me show you two headlines here:
“Russian president declare officially a war on Ukraine”
Or
“Russia declare war on Ukraine”
Which one is more representative and more accurate of the situation?
I think you would understand my point from my example here.
Just because official X said that, does not mean that the whole country is ok with him.
Im pretty sure everybody knows that. It probably doesn’t need to be spelled out every single time someone makes am announcement.
“Company X is excited for release of new product”
Vs.
“This Company X PR rep says they are excited for release of new product, although the 10,000 other employees at Company X have not yet made official statements on their opinions of new product.”
This is so common in writing that is has its own name.
All hands on deck
Yes. The person speaking probably wants the legs, torsos, etc of the crew there as well.
Why do they say the shorter thing? Because it means exactly the same thing to anyone who has taken high school level English classes and uses fewer words.
“Russia” is not an entity that has an ability to do things and readers understand that.
Well Russia is a country. Russians are citizens. There’s a test here whether or not a reasonable person can understand and I would argue that a reasonable person would understand the difference between a country and a citizen of the country.
That just sounds like extra words added to a headline that everyone already understands.
Even if your way IS better, things aren’t often done “the best” way.
Costs, space, time and extra work often make a “less than perfect” method MORE realistic in day to day processes.
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Because not all sources allow attribution.
Can you expand on that point or give example?
An MP or elected official wants to leak some information. They talk to a journalist and a condition of the information is the MP can not be named. What would you do as a journalist?
If you name your source, you will no longer get any information from them, depending on the sensitivity of the information the person may loose their position and be shoved to the back benches.
You are talking about unofficial leaks?
In that case, it’s even more important than any other case to seperate between officials and their countries.
"Ukrainian official had said that Ukraine have 1000 nuclear bombs’
Is unofficial statement marked clearly, on the other hand:
“Ukraine says they have 1000 nuclear bombs”
Is misleading and does not represent the situation correctly and would lead to people being misinformed about what is a leak and what is an official info.
