Mea Culpa: Read all about it

Susanna Richards blasts some unwarranted journalese in last week’s Independent

It is never in our interest to sensationalise the news (Getty)

Tory minister slammed after claiming Labour new towns would be ‘filled with illegal migrants’”, read a somewhat alarming headline on our homepage last week. “Slam” is a word that is frowned upon by the sub-editing department, but our writers have still managed to use it a number of times in the past week. It’s acceptable in the context of a violent incident, such as a missile strike or a car hitting a wall – and obviously when writing about sport – but we should not use it to mean “criticise”, in the same way that we shouldn’t say someone “blasted” someone else for doing something they didn’t approve of.

This sort of language is unnecessary. The Independent is not a tabloid newspaper and does not need to sensationalise its articles; attempting to do so can distract and put off our readers, who I like to think have chosen us for our measured and factual coverage of stories whose details are often quite shocking enough on their own.

On probation: Another word that is supposed to be banned from our reporting is “probe”, in the sense of “investigate”. Sadly, this instruction is frequently ignored, leading to some awkward and rather inappropriate headlines – such as one that read “Police officer dubbed ‘lesbian nana’ probed after pepper spray video”, which appeared on our site last week.