(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

Dear Associated Press: Please be consistent with your nouns.

Indianapolis police say thieves who broke into a man's apartment not only stole his flat-screen TV, but they also made him help carry it down some stairs. Jason Geminden and his girlfriend were asleep when three masked men woke them early Wednesday. One of the suspects told the pair they were so helpful they wouldn't be tied up.

An interesting story, but I'm concerned about the use of "suspect" in the last sentence. If it's already known that a given person said as much, then I would think that that person was no longer a mere suspect. Who but the actual criminals would say it?

Comments

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

well, perhaps in a grammatical sense - as in he is no longer suspected of having said it, but that's not the intention of the use of the word here - in a journalistic sense - they are all suspects of the crime, until arrested and they have their day in court and are found guilty or not guilty they can ONLY be suspected of having committed the crime. So journalisticaly its not incorrect.

I suppose they could have used 'thieves' again, or 'perpetrators' - however, it is far, far, from the worst grammatical error I've ever seen in professional journalism and even then - it's not really an error at all, but perhaps a stylistic faux pas

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty touchy about media doing things that could taint our judgment of suspects. OJ may have been guilty, but it was too early in the case when his mugshot covered a magazine.