Dead End

I have noticed lately that a lot of the scripts that make the air around here seem to refer to car accidents that involve a death as "fatal accidents," or, even worse, a "fatality."
Now, when we talk to law enforcement on the telephone, we typically hear them say "it was a two-car m.v.a. that resulted in one fatality."
But cops also typically say "the suspect was apprehended after a lengthy pursuit in which the suspect discarded narcotics and other contraband that he previously had on his person."
We would NEVER say that on TV, mainly because that is not how you would describe what happened to your mom.
We try to be conversational.
That is precisely why I think "fatal" is a word that has no place in our scripts.
I take the word "fatal" out of my scripts, if I can help it.
News13 very frequently compiles and reports on statistics about deadly accidents, and on second or third reference in a 30 second script, you may very well have to refer to a deadly accident as a "fatality."
But it's still not very conversational, if you ask me.
How many times have you heard a conversation at the grocery store that goes like this:
"Hey, did you see all that traffic around lunchtime on Carolina Forest Boulevard? What was going on?'
"Oh yeah, there was a two-car m.v.a. that resulted in two fatalities. Victim one was d.o.a. and victim two was transported to M.U.S.C. where he expired upon arrival."
Never!
You would say, "there was an awful accident down there--I think someone died."
That is how we should report the news.
Fair, objective, and conversational. That is how it should be done. Not read like an incident report.
Just my thoughts.

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