The art of misdirection

Really tragic events are not uncommon, unfortunately, but this morning's Daily Post features one of the more worrying, both in terms of the  incident itself and how the media can 'slant' the actual reporting. 

The  facts of the case are straightforward. A ten year-old girl was sitting in the passenger side front seat of the car and was trying to send a text message.  The mother - whilst driving - leaned across to help her and thus didn't look where she was going, veered across the road and smashed into two other vehicles, triggering the air bags, causing the passenger side airbag to strike the girl's forehead, fracturing her skull and leading to her death.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident the mother accepted full responsibility, and it is indeed a trauma which will remain with her the rest of her life.

But the Daily Post writes "Ten year-old Chloe Ann Bunney died of serious head injuries caused by an airbag, after her mum’s car crashed into two others in a horrific accident".  In that statement, there is no intimation of what caused the accident,which is interesting.  The Post then goes on to say "Mum Jolene had taken her eyes off the road to lean over and help Chloe send a text message to her gran." and uses warm, friendly terminology such as 'mum' and 'gran' to soften the overall impact of a tragic event and to deflect the responsibility for the accident. They then report the coroner's findings by writing "Recording a verdict of accidental death at the inquest in Caernarfon, the coroner said: 'The injury was caused not by the impact but by the airbag. '"

But surely the injury was caused by the collision, which was caused by the mother driving dangerously?

This was a tragic event, in all senses of the word,  and we feel for the mother in this case.  But cloying reporting of the type used by the Post does nothing to highlight the dangers of texting or using a mobile phone while driving and acts merely to deflect full responsibility for a tragic error.  Of course, this is nothing new, but this mother might lack the immense resources of professional parents - such as Doctors - who could, if they perhaps left their own children unattended while enjoying a meal with friends, for instance, engage in a truly epic exercise in misdirection to eschew any responsibility for their actions, no matter how reprehensible, or how dire the consequences.