The anatomy of a headline: Some stories on Federal Way tragedy imply it’s part of Seattle

Last night’s dead­ly ram­page in Fed­er­al Way — which result­ed in the deaths of five indi­vid­u­als at the Pinewood Vil­lage apart­ments com­plex just off Pacif­ic High­way South — has focused nation­al and inter­na­tion­al atten­tion on our region.

Although the tragedy occurred in Fed­er­al Way and author­i­ties there are han­dling the inves­ti­ga­tion, sev­er­al nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media out­lets are incor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing the event as a “Seat­tle shoot­ing” or a shoot­ing in Seat­tle, imply­ing that it hap­pened in our region’s biggest city. In fact, the Fed­er­al Way city lim­its are some twen­ty miles south of the heart of Seat­tle, and dri­ving from one city hall to anoth­er takes twen­ty-five min­utes… in good traffic.

A quick check of sto­ries per­tain­ing to the tragedy on Bing News revealed some head­lines that are mis­lead­ing and could have been bet­ter written.

Let’s com­pare a few:

• Five dead after shoot­ing at apart­ment in Seat­tle sub­urb: This is a Chica­go Tri­bune head­line. Wins points for accu­ra­cy and brevity.
• Seat­tle Shoot­ing: Five Killed at Apart­ment Com­plex in Wash­ing­ton Near Seat­tle, One Sus­pect Dead: The tragedy did not hap­pen in Seat­tle, so the first two words should­n’t be there. In addi­tion to being mis­lead­ing, those two words unnec­es­sar­i­ly increase the length of this Mstars headline.
• 5 Dead After Seat­tle-Area Shoot­ing: This is from U.S. News and World Report. It’s cer­tain­ly short but it could be more concise.
• Seat­tle apart­ment shoot­ings leave five dead: This one’s from the BBC, and they should know bet­ter. The tragedy did not hap­pen in Seat­tle. If “Seat­tle” is going to appear in the head­line, there needs to be a qual­i­fi­er, as there is in the Tri­bune and U.S. News headlines.
• Police: 5 killed in shoot­ing south of Seat­tle: This is an Ore­gon­ian head­line on an Asso­ci­at­ed Press sto­ry. It’s short enough and there’s a qual­i­fi­er, but it’s not as good as the Chica­go Tri­bune head­line. There are a lot of places south of Seat­tle. The word sub­urb implies a city or town that is close to a big­ger city, which is what Fed­er­al Way is.

Our own local media, of course, don’t need to say “Seat­tle area”. We here in Wash­ing­ton know where Fed­er­al Way is.

• Police say 1 of the dead in Fed­er­al Way had killed 4 oth­ers (Seat­tle Times)
• Five dead in shoot­ing at Fed­er­al Way apart­ment com­plex (KING5)
• Police say man shot by Fed­er­al Way offi­cers respon­si­ble for slay­ing of 4/Gun­fight ends in blood­bath in Fed­er­al Way (KIRO 7)
• Police: Domes­tic dis­pute led to ram­page that left 5 dead (KOMO 4)

There are a lot of details about this tragedy we still don’t know. We do know that the man killed by police last night — who is sus­pect­ed of killing the oth­ers — had a license to car­ry a con­cealed weapon. And he was abu­sive: Law enforce­ment knew this guy, because he’d been vio­lent before. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was armed last night, and he did ter­ri­ble dam­age with his weapons.

We at NPI extend our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies and friends of those killed in this sense­less act of vio­lence. Anoth­er mass shoot­ing has result­ed in more death and destruc­tion. We’re left to won­der: When is enough enough? When are we going to put human rights ahead of “gun rights”?