Why do 'spokesmen' do such a lousy job?
Please read this article – in particular the third paragraph – from today’s Atlanta newspaper article
The spokesman says “the occupant… is deceased at this time.”
That seems to be an incredibly stupid thing to say. Will there be a time in the future when the occupant will no longer be deceased? What would be been wrong with saying “the driver of the car died”?
What happened to the way that people speak?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
3 Answers
Between bad spokesmen and the downfall of journalism standards in general, I often feel it actually makes sense to get all of one’s news from Facebook. At least then you can tell people directly to improve their grammar. When I redline the newspaper, there’s no face around to shove it into.
he actually seems to have done all right… the sentence you’re complaining about is
a little after that… fire department got on scene, also Grady EMS got on scene, and confirmed there was a male in the vehicle, and the male was deceased, at the/that time
“at the time” is referencing when the departments arrived and confirmed he was dead… “got” jumped out, but that’s regional as well.
also, if you say “some guy died in his car, looks like a tree fell on him”, on the news, you can be pretty sure it will come across as callous and someone will be offended. Damned if you do… you know
Open your link.
Apparently the story is still being edited.
That’s encouraging, because around here the stupid shit would go into print and no one would ever give it a second thought.
I think the proofreaders were caught in the first wave of layoffs.
We stopped advertising in the local newspaper when they crossed the 50/50 line. The ads were wrong (day, date, time or location) more often than they were right. Nobody cared.
We’d just as soon people didn’t know we had an auction as to have them show up at the wrong time or place.
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
