A now-former employee at a Michigan middle school allegedly choked a 14-year-old student with a shirt, in an incident captured on surveillance footage.
The teen’s parents are calling for charges against the now-former coach.
Yeah, not sure if we read the same article. It definitely uses media safe terms like allegedly, but only on actions that would be legal definitions of crimes. After that it refers to it as “the incident” (and not as “the alleged incident”). They never hedge around whether the attack happened, and the rest of the article even strongly takes the side of the family. I see nothing that makes it seem like the news agency likes or is siding with the ex-coach.
I guess maybe taking all of the “allegedly” and “appears to” at face value you could get the impression of them being dodgy, but it’s just how they have to report it until facts are discovered in a trial. Actually, they even later quote the family’s attorney calling it a “horrific assault and battery”, no “allegedly” in sight, because it was a quote referencing what was being investigated.
they literally put scare quotes around “assault” like it’s a dubious statement that an assault took place. Even if you want to try and somehow argue that the school got the wrong guy, that it really wasn’t the coach, there’s enough evidence to say that an assault took place.
(this is a screen grab from the linked article above.)
Yes. Assault is a legal term. Even if it is on video, if there is an open case in court about this incident they need to phrase it that way. The quotation marks aren’t scare quotes, this is part of what the family’s attorney, Jordan Vahdat, said. Probably deconstructed from a sentence like “and we are seeking to file for assault charges against the formerly trusted coach”, because trusted coach was also in quotes.
The assault absolutely took place, and the article never infers that it didn’t.
Yeah, not sure if we read the same article. It definitely uses media safe terms like allegedly, but only on actions that would be legal definitions of crimes. After that it refers to it as “the incident” (and not as “the alleged incident”). They never hedge around whether the attack happened, and the rest of the article even strongly takes the side of the family. I see nothing that makes it seem like the news agency likes or is siding with the ex-coach.
I guess maybe taking all of the “allegedly” and “appears to” at face value you could get the impression of them being dodgy, but it’s just how they have to report it until facts are discovered in a trial. Actually, they even later quote the family’s attorney calling it a “horrific assault and battery”, no “allegedly” in sight, because it was a quote referencing what was being investigated.
they literally put scare quotes around “assault” like it’s a dubious statement that an assault took place. Even if you want to try and somehow argue that the school got the wrong guy, that it really wasn’t the coach, there’s enough evidence to say that an assault took place.
(this is a screen grab from the linked article above.)
Yes. Assault is a legal term. Even if it is on video, if there is an open case in court about this incident they need to phrase it that way. The quotation marks aren’t scare quotes, this is part of what the family’s attorney, Jordan Vahdat, said. Probably deconstructed from a sentence like “and we are seeking to file for assault charges against the formerly trusted coach”, because trusted coach was also in quotes.
The assault absolutely took place, and the article never infers that it didn’t.