“Brendan Nugent [went] on to allegedly drive a Toyota LandCruiser into the independent MP Helen Haines in a targeted attack”
(The Guardian)
I don’t care about the car’s model name or brand so why is it always specified in news stories or podcasts?
Also, why don’t we do that with everything else?
“The robber took her Longchamp bag before fleeing on his Minimotors Dualtron Mini. A witness saw the scene an called the police with their iPhone 18 Pro.”
Sounds fun, right?
Because it’s a very quick and easy way to paint a mental picture.
Because it’s relevant. The kind of car that hits somebody makes a big difference.
This got me thinking about how this is not the case for gun make and models for shootings. The only thing you ever hear is handgun, semi-automatic, or the scary assault rifle. Does the manufacturer of an AR-15 matter, not really, but caliber and gun type sometimes do.
The AR-15 thing is funny to me. Notice whenever an AR-15 is used in a shooting it’s BIG NEWS? Now think back on the guy in Maine who killed a bunch of people. (God damned was that guy screaming for help. Reg flags flying high.) Took me 3-days to find a news report on the gun used. It was an AR-10, basically the same as an AR-15. ducks as gun nuts throw rotten tomatoes.
But they didn’t report that because no one gives a shit about an AR-10. Very few have heard of one, not newsworthy. Now consider the public’s opinion of AR-15’s, the Toyota Corolla of guns. Not the best at anything, certainly not killing humans, but reliable, simple, inexpensive, customizable, AHH!
Anyway, I know I’m off topic. Merely puzzled as to why our billionaire media overlords would want public opinion turned against a simple, easy, cheap(ish), reliable rifle. One ponders what they would do if we built working guillotines…
Also details make a story. Otherwise it might be something like: “This guy hit someone with a car. End of story”
Before searching, I didn’t know a Toyota Landcruiser was a 4x4 SUV, which is the relevant piece of information in this case.
I used this example because it was the one that made me wonder why the car’s brand is always specified but I hear that nearly everywhere: “The killer drove his Ford Puma to the victim’s house…”, “they fled the robbery in a Pontiac Firebird” (I invented these ones).
The only other case of brands or models being mentioned that I can think of are planes, rockets and weapons which are not common objects everyone will buy in their life.
But I did know that. So do many others. So when a news story mentions that someone was hit by a Landcruiser we can immediately differentiate that from a Prius or an F-150.
You could maybe just say “SUV” but even that has a lot of ambiguity.
Then add in the fact that the press tends to stick to consistent reporting styles, and when describing vehicles it’s also helpful in situations where the perpetrator is still at large.
I have to admit my knowledge of cars is really limited…
it’s also helpful in situations where the perpetrator is still at large.
That’s a good point, and I think it answers my question, thank you!
It’s as relevant as describing the clothes a criminal is wearing and it tends to stay with stories written years later.
The exact make and model isn’t always strictly relevant. In this particular example it would suffice to just say “large SUV” or similar. Not everyone knows what kind of a car LandCruiser even is.
Yes but sometimes it is relavent. And it’s safer to have one consistent style of reporting for this sorta things. So when it does matter it’s not accidentally forgotten or over looked.
It’s a better safe than sorry approach.
Same reason they use surnames. For clarity.
Pulling from memory, so don’t expect accurate industry terminology.
But it comes down to conveying details in a way that paints a picture with facts
If I tell you a car hits someone, what happens in your head could include anything related to a car, including an RC car. So you want details that flesh things out. It becomes a Ford hitting someone, which now lets you know it was an automobile, since Ford isn’t making much in the way of anything else.
But there’s all kinds of automobiles. Could be a truck, a van, a sedan, a cargo vehicle, etc. So now I tell you it was a 73 mustang. The picture is almost complete. For televised news, that’s almost always the end of the description, but print journalism may well provide the color of the car, maybe some other detail to fill out the article in a way that improves the reader’s ability to internalize external events.
Depending on where, some journalism degree programs teach the format as a process where you layer facts based on the space available, which is often determined by the importance of the events (which is subjective as hell, but a car hitting me isn’t front page news even in my own town. But Taylor Swift being hit would be). There’s a term for the craft of it all, a way to decide which bits of data to shave off as article length gets shorter, or air time decreases.
You’ll see that kind of choice made in fiction too, it’s just less formalized, and a writer’s style is involved. Some writers give you every detail of a person’s face, others may give you nothing bit hair and eye color. Some may present a description all in one place, others might scatter it through multiple pages, or even the entire length of a book. I tend to favor spreading descriptions out, and intentionally leaving out the fine details so there’s room for imagination. Some stuff I’ve written doesn’t have any description of the characters at all.
In your example, providing the make and model gives the bare minimum information to form an image in the mind, and (barring our fellow humans with aphantasia) that tends to be the best way to engage a reader.
As a tangent, there’s a book titled “Lullaby” by Chuck Palahniuk that has a main character who is a journalist, and Palahniuk uses the process of gathering details as part of his building of the character. It’s a brilliant piece of craft, and worth reading for that alone.
EXCELLENT comment! OP’s not going to get a better one.
Could be a truck, a van, a sedan, a cargo vehicle, etc. Why not just say which of those then? Many people don’t an encyclopedic knowledge of every model of vehicle.
You still get a rough picture in your head, if you have the sort of brain that makes pictures from words. Only thing that comment left out was, uh, don’t know the word, “verifiable details that add veracity to the story”? As they said, no point in going too deep, but a little color in the story is helpful.
And?
You still provide the necessary information. Someone that doesn’t know can find out. Easily, even before the internet.
Besides they don’t have to know to form a picture of the events, they just need the scaffolding to build it on, and details provide that
Not quite so. The media also insists on doing this with guns, while cramming in as many irrelevant descriptions and scare-words as possible.
I’m used to old.lemmy.world, don’t see how to copy my comment URL, but see my reply on AR-15s. I think you’ll find it hits (heh) home.
Do they always do that?
I just looked through recent articles on vehicle-related incidents on a major local news website for my city, and that doesn’t seem to be the case at least there.
- https://wien.orf.at/stories/3376060/ doesn’t mention it, though it does have a photo of the car in question
- https://wien.orf.at/stories/3375812/ isn’t directly about a car crash, but is about someone getting assaulted over vehicle-related behavior; doesn’t mention the car model
- https://wien.orf.at/stories/3375778/ doesn’t mention it
I was unable to quickly find a recent story on that site that does mention it, so your premise doesn’t seem to be exactly true; maybe it’s true where you live, but not everywhere in the world.
“maybe it’s true where you live”
Well, that goes for most things. Social media is painful sometimes because we forget not everyone is, for example, American, and even then, culture varies wildly.
Had a lady on Bluesky arguing that ambulances always light up in neighborhoods for emergencies. I said they never have anywhere I’ve lived, not until they hit the main road or highway. I was WRONG because they do so in her area. 🤷🏼♂️ (That was about Mitch McConnell’s “death”.)
would you rather get hit by a Miata or a Ram?
This is entirely speculation on my part.
News articles on automobile collisions usually come from the initial police investigation reports. At least in the USA, such reports capture the bare minimum of details that the police are required to collect, such as the age of the motorists and victims involved, rough property damage estimates, and the vehicles involved.
Although it’s true that different jurisdictions might require this information in different formats, certain fields are mandatory to report to the national agency on highway safety, in order to identify trends that point to a class-wide issue. For example, without adequate data, it would be hard to correlate a rare condition where a particular model of car malfunctions on the highway, making it much harder to start a recall of said automobile.
As a result, what the police collect first will guarantee that they meet their reporting obligation. And since that report forms the basis of what journalists then – IMO, lazily – copy into an article and editors slap a clickbait title on it, that’s what ends up being the de facto format for such news articles.
In the USA, this results in the absurd situation where even in an article about malicious collisions by a motorist into a bicyclist, the article will dutifully report that the motorist was wearing a seat belt and the bicyclist was wearing a helmet… As if somehow either seat belts or helmets would have changed the outcome of an assault.
Well, he didn’t hit her with this, did he? https://www.otto.de/p/rolektro-elektromobil-rolektro-maximus-mx4-6-700-w-6-km-h-1943289422/
