Saturday, September 06, 2008

Time to buy a thesaurus

So I'm reading up on the news this morning... (did you know these people are paid to write?) and came across this story about a kid who was nabbed handing out fake $20's at his elementary school.

"The fake bills were discovered when a child tried to use one to pay for lunch. An administrator then tracked down several other students with fake bills. Those students all identified the boy.

"The boy—who was not identified—was turned over to the Department of Children and Families after authorities learned his guardians had warrants for their arrest."

Ok... Identified is used properly, but with the proximity to itself.. was he identified, or not? So the kids would point him out to the principal, but none of these goofy kids wanted to get his name in the paper... Either you're telling me that you're not going to identify this hoodlum, or that you're bad at your job as a reporter.

1 comment:

Josee said...

poor editing or no editing (as you probably found this online) ... it should read "who police declined to identify." My take is that the children identified the boy to police who, in turn, would not identify the child to reporters and hence the public. Privacy laws dictate that police do not report the identity of minors. And most newspapers will clarify somewhere in the story that minors are not typically identified by name.