What Makes for News?

Screenshot: New York Post news article headline (click onto image to view enlargement).

Someone had recently sent me a link to an online news article, published within an out of state tabloid newspaper, with a blaring headline about how a “[h]omeless shooting suspect …” had been taken into custody after being accused of killing three of their family members in a neighboring state.

These murders are, as with all murders, senseless and terrible as well as tragic to be sure. No argument there. None whatsoever.

Yet, the headline for this particular news story got me thinking once again on a subject I have quietly thought about from time to time previously, including after having seen headlines and news stories numerous times over the years about someone living unhoused, aka living homeless, who had been accused of one criminal act or another, whether major or minor in nature, including some published in local as well as statewide newspapers and also featured on TV News here in Vermont

However, ever notice about how when a suspect is accused of a crime, when they are not living unhoused (homeless; i.e., they have permanent housing of one sort of another), the news media never ever uses a headline for a news story along the lines of:

Stably housed suspect (__________________; fill in the blank).

The same, of course, goes for those deemed or perceived to have either a mental illness or an emotional disturbance and so on.

When the crime involves someone who is not deemed or perceived to have such, the news media never uses a headline for a news story that goes along the lines of:

Normal person suspected of (__________________; fill in the blank).

Go figure!

Why is this? 

Simple, because it is not the type of headline and news story that can be hyped up enough to get people’s attention as well as reinforce their prejudices and gain their ire.

Why should their housing, mental or emotional status and so on matter, except to create headlines and news stories that sell newspapers or that otherwise keep people glued endlessly to their TV screens and, as a result, only end up stoking fear as well as hatred and extreme prejudice against people living unhoused or otherwise those deemed not to be normal (rhetorically posed)?

That is to suggest about how the headline as well as news story should instead be something along the lines of:

Suspect ... taken into custody or, ...

Shooting suspect taken into custody.

Although there will more than likely be those who would strongly disagree with me on these points and even for raising the issue at all, particularly in light of the murders reported by the New York Post article noted above, in my opinion however, there should be no need or excuse to use the person's housing, mental or emotional status and so on in either the headline or news story, because it is irrelevant in most, if not all, cases and circumstances.