‘100th British troop’: CBS News breaks the stupidity barrier
Back in November I had pedantic remarks to make about a tragic story from Afghanistan: ‘BBC English: the decline and fall continues’. The point was that the BBC, in reporting the possibility that UK ‘friendly fire’ had killed two Danish soldiers, reported the story as MOD investigating claim UK ‘friendly fire’ killed two Danish troops. ‘If one individual had been reported dead’, I mused, ’would the headline have referred to the killing of “one Danish troop”?’
Well, CBS News has indeed broken that particular stupidity barrier with their headline today, reporting on the deaths of three British soldiers in Afghanistan: ‘Afghan Violence Claims 100th British Troop’.
Why is this stupid? Here’s an article that explains all. Here’s another, with added lefty hand-wringing (more of the same here, in the fourth paragraph down).
UPDATE: They’ve corrected it to ‘100th British soldier’, which is nice to see but doesn’t really make up for their initial dumbness.
