Comment by cjs_ac
6 days ago
This trend for commenting on news articles with nothing to say but a complaint about the wording of the headline is tedious. The right to free speech does not impose a responsibility to say something about everything you see.
Your argument is that the wording of headlines is so meaningless as to always be beneath comment? Seems silly.
I think you're missing the point by a mile. The point isn't some tedious debate over grammar; it's about the choice of language that perpetuates the idea that suicide is a tragedy that happens passively 'to people' in some kind of tragic, medicalised, incomprehensible way which is severed from any socio-political context.
In this case, these people were driven to suicide. I would argue that those responsible for the Horizon scandal are guilty of at minimum manslaughter of these poor people.
It's a headline. It's not supposed to convey any nuance, it's just there to encourage you to read the article.
I agree that the wording isn't ideal, and I agree that the headline fails to capture the nuance of the circumstances that lead to suicide, but I disagree that subeditors who write headlines need to encapsulate that nuance. That's what the article is for.