Don't Understand Murder? That Could Be the Death of Language
This issue is a killer. But that doesn't make it murder.
And there is a difference – at least legally.
Reporters are urged to know and appreciate the difference between murder and a generic homicide – which is usually referred to as a killing or slaying. Sometimes we just describe the act: He was shot to death, or She was stabbed to death.
On a recent morning on National Public Radio, Renee Montagne introduced a story about what she said was the “murder” of a popular high school football coach in Iowa.
Reporter Tom Goldman made a reference in his story to the day the coach “was murdered.”
Even though their work is highly scripted, it is delivered as talk. So maybe we don't hold radio and TV people's on-air "conversation" to the same standards of precision and accuracy that we do print journalists.
Newspaper writers are taught that not every killing is murder, which is a legal determination. The AP Stylebook supports that distinction.
If a killing was justified, it's self-defense. If it was a spontaneous crime of passion committed in the heat of the moment, it might be manslaughter. If a defendant is acquitted, it wasn't actually a crime at all. Those, too, are legal determinations.
In every one of those cases, the victim is just as dead. But there was no murder.
Each state writes its own law on homicide, but murder is generally a killing that is malicious and – most important – premeditated. That is, some planning went into the act. Not a lot of planning is necessary – maybe only a split second. A judge or jury makes that determination in rendering a verdict.
The guy who killed the Iowa coach has been charged with murder, a legally defined crime. But unless the justice system determines the facts of the case constitute murder and reaches that verdict, the act wasn't murder.
In their casual conversations – or in their broadcasts – most people probably use “murder” to describe just about any homicide.
But journalists need to be more precise in using the language.
