George Floyd and the Passive Voice

In 1946, George Orwell published Politics and the English Language in the literature and art magazine, Horizon. He was drawing attention to the bad writing of his time: where politicians were using jargon to obfuscate the truth. 

Two years later, Orwell published 1984 a novel describing a totalitarian government, InSoc, using altered speech to control not only the lives, but the minds of its people.

Orwell recognized that language construction matters. This is why Orwell castigates the use of the passive voice in political writing and speech.

The passive voice is when the active element of a sentence---the "do-er"---is changed from subject to object. For example:

Active: Steve threw the apple

Passive: The apple was thrown by Steve

The worst iteration is the following: The apple was thrown.

One can see that the third sentence removes any "do-er" at all. The reader does not know who threw the apple. Instead, the apple becomes the subject of the sentence and we are left to wonder who threw it.

In the wake of national protests against police brutality and systemic racism, I have noticed a dereliction of journalistic duty. Most news outlets run some variation of the following construction when describing the Minneapolis police killing which incited national protests:

"The Killing of George Floyd"

There are variants which sometimes  include the perpetrators: "The Killing of George Floyd In Police Custody" or "George Floyd Police Killing". But notice that few outlets write the active variant:

"Police Officer kills George Floyd" 

No doubt, many media outlets ran these titles before coroner's reports were available. We were not sure whether it was, in fact, the direct actions of Derek Chauvin which caused Floyd's death. Now, Attorney General Keith Ellison has charged Chauvin with second degree murder. We are certain that the 8 minutes and 46 seconds Chauvin spent kneeling on Floyd's neck was why he died.

Despite this, the law still holds that those who are guilty will not be charged while doubts remain. This is good and necessary in a democracy where people are given a fair trial. Regardless of the legal outcome, Chauvin will have contributed to George Floyd's death. That fact should not be allowed to hide in passive language.

For people to be held accountable for their actions, we must write well. Orwell's warning still matters. If journalists do not write clearly, they run the risk of obfuscating the truth and allowing perpetrators respite from justice.