The Importance of Active vs. Passive Voice in Protest Coverage

I wanted to use the two tweets from NYT to explain active versus passive voice and why it matters in news coverage (particularly when covering charged topics at the moment).

A sentence typically has a clear subject and verb. When you write a sentence, you can write in active or passive voice. Active voice is subject then verb. An example is “I fixed the car.” Passive is an inversion of this i.e. “The car was fixed by me.” There are levels of active and passive voice, particularly relating to the subject and verb. Examples:

Joshua sliced an apple
A man sliced an apple
An apple was sliced by Joshua
An apple was sliced by a man
An apple was sliced
The slicing of an apple was by a man

The subject of the sentence is the most important part, and usually comes at the beginning. When it comes at the end, our brain is less likely to register it as important as it is. Another effect created in the difference between active and passive is assumed agency.

Active voice takes ownership (someone did something) while passive voice makes ownership more nebulous (something was done by someone). It distances the wrong thing away from the subject…