It certainly implies that the wife's adultery caused the murders. The vision you get from the headlines is "Man wronged by woman, driven to murder." Eve did it! Her and that damn apple!

Great post, and something I had rarely considered before. Although I admit to wondering how much of this is an issue of journalistic method.

#1. Is describing a chain of events (or a subject's motivation) in journalism the same as condoning the chain of events/motivation? Ex: if you're crazy...and you decide to do x "because of" y...and if I report this, is that even remotely the same as saying you were right? The first headline is "Police: Dad killed 5 kids because wife was leaving," not "Police: Dad killed 5 kids because she was leaving and it was all her fault."

#2. Do these reporters have the freedom to write other types of headlines? Ex: "Police: Mentally/emotionally maladjusted human being goes bugsh*t crazy and kills 5 people over pathetic excuse with faulty reasoning." These are the words that flash through my mind when I read headlines like these. but can they be printed? The police certainly can't say it this way even if it's what they think...and neither can reporters at most newspapers.

#3. If the purpose of a headline is to encapsulate a story in a few words, does it still fulfill this purpose when we omit part of the story (even part that we all agree is bs reasoning and excuse making on the part of the shooter). Would not every headline regarding murder become simply "Crazy person shoots other(s)."

I disagree with both Lisa and Jesse. With the exception of the AFP story (note: Google doesn't have a news service - it merely displays news items from various sources around the web, so the attribution there is wrong), none of the stories puts the wife in an "active" position. The first one doesn't even mention the wife, it talks of a "breakup". The other two stories merely attempt to explain the reasons the murderer had in mind, his "rational" for his actions. They do not put the blame on the wife. This becomes all the more obvious when you look further into the stories: the AP story talks right away about a "jealous husband driven to rage by another man", squarely putting the blame on the husband's own personality.

I would agree that these stories mostly leave the blame-giving to interpretation by the reader (that is, a reader prone to blame the wife for "causing" the husband to murder his children can certainly read that into the stories as seen here), but this does not equal victim blaming by the media themselves.

@Dubi and Todd: Yes. Agree. These sound like descriptions of the facts of the story. How else might the headline read?

Dubi, Joshua -

Troubled Father of 5 Kills Children, Self
Distraught Man Shot His Own Children Before Suicide
Dad's Rage Results in Death of Five Children
Pastor Calls Family Tragedy "A Rotten Murder"
Children Slain in Their Beds by Dad
Washington State Man Suspected of Killing 5 Children

The last one is the headline the CBC used.

Every day, tons of men and women leave their spouses, for various reasons, but yet, the first impulse of a reasonable human being isn't to go out and kill their children.

This link may be related: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/04/06/culture-and-psychology-the-case-of-mass-murderers/

I certainly am disturbed by the fact that the news gave a rationale for the murderer and focused only on "How He Killed His 5 Kids" and "Devastated & Spurned Husband".

-They sugarcoat "burst of insanity" with "deadly rage" and "rage" in the Seattle Times.

-They specifically blame the breakup as the reason why he killed his 5 children and wife in the headline of the Yahoo! article. (No surprise there) In fact, they even go on to say that the father was "devastated" at the Kansascity article AND they specifically say "Spurned by wife" instead of "unreasonable/insane/abusive".

They don't even mention that this is typical behavior of an abusive person; no, it's just "He got mad and killed his kids". Are those media outlets/journalists downplaying homicide along with domestic violence?

Todd's Example Headline: “Police: Mentally/emotionally maladjusted human being goes bugsh*t crazy and kills 5 people over pathetic excuse with faulty reasoning.”

I think that this DEFINITELY should have been a headline, without including the breakup/wife element. Makes it harder for others to "sympathize" with the murderer as an anti-hero or "a man who got spurned".
(See the Contexts link I posted above)

And if including the "breakup/wife" element was SOMEHOW still necessary to include (why do the journalists always put in these kind of details?) then maybe it could be along the lines of "Crazy and abusive man murders his 5 children over a stupid breakup".

Note how there is more emphasis on "crazy and abusive", rather than "cheating wife/breakup". Note how I also failed to directly call him a "father" or a "husband" or a "lover". And I still think that adding "The Breakup" was not necessary.

Additional note: it seems clear to me that the first story, from the Seattle Times is a follow up to the original story about the murder[1], titled "Five children slain in Graham-area home". So the whole point of the second story, featured in the post, is to try to explain this insane crime. This explains why the headline is what it is - because it is assumed that the reader already knows the WHAT, WHO and WHERE. The new information in THIS article is the "why" (as insane as it may be).

So it isn't all about those creepy journalists not making any sense. These stories have to be taken in the context of when they were published and what was known at the time.

I expect the AP story (Yahoo) is basically the same: this is a quote from the police announcement released some time after the murder, AFTER the major news outlets have already reported the WHAT and the WHO. The "why" is the only piece left, and therefore it is emphasized in this particular headline.

Su, I don't understand what you're saying has anything to do with what I'm saying. Every day thousands lose their jobs. But when a disgruntled worker comes into his former workplace and shoots everyone, you think the papers should hide the fact he's a former employee?

What everyone here is doing is demanding that newspapers take a very clear moral stand on the story, while the newspapers are attempting to be as objective as possible (within known limitations). That leaves the items open for interpretation. That's a GOOD thing.

[1] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008986370_websixdead04m.html

These victim-blaming headlines AND the "why doesn't she leave?!" response to domestic abuse exist at the same time, in the same space. Funny that.

My girlfriend and I were discussing this, and she looked up some headlines from the Andrea Yates case. This case is relevant because it involved a woman who murdered her kids, and afterwards, she claimed that her husband had abused her. The headlines consistently left out any influence that the father might have had on the murder, and even portrayed him as grieving.

So, I guess I take it back. It's sexist.

"The first one doesn’t even mention the wife, it talks of a “breakup”."

A break up that was the wife's fault - you know, for leaving with another man.

"The other two stories merely attempt to explain the reasons the murderer had in mind, his “rational” for his actions. They do not put the blame on the wife. "

Except, you know, that the reason he was doing all this was because SHE left him.

"This becomes all the more obvious when you look further into the stories: the AP story talks right away about a “jealous husband driven to rage by another man”, squarely putting the blame on the husband’s own personality."

Something the wife provoked for leaving him for another man.

This ain't rocket science. The message is clear - if she'd been a good wife, he'd never have become a murderer.

Nevermind that she's reported him for being abusive multiple times in the past - it's all her fault that he "suddenly" "snapped".

The various headlines Su wrote are good, but at best they only half cover the journalistic question of WHY. To use lisa's original metaphor of the flammable person and the match striker...

"Flammable person bursts into flames" doesn't accurately describe the events. Neither does "Person lit on fire by other with match." It takes something like "Flammable person ignites when someone lights match" to get it all across.

It has the added benefit of leaving it up to the reader to decide whether the person striking the match caused it or whether it was just a meaningless trigger because if you're flammable you're bound to go up sometime.

The idea of the media making my value judgments for me is scary. While I think it's perfectly okay for me, in my own head or words, to translate "Man kills kids when wife leaves" into "Crazy dude finally snaps over some BS and his own weakness," I won't trust a general news source that tries to make that judgment for me.

Now if (and I say 'if' to be generous) there are people who translate the above headlines into "Rightious man kills evil wife for perfectly good reason," that's jacked up and terrifying in it's own way. But I would still argue that it's better than letting the media explicitly pick one side or the other and stuff it down my throat.

As for the cases in which the media fails to report a man's behavior that may have acted as a trigger (right or not) for a woman to kill him...that's a case of something being broken in the media. But I think the solution is to start including the why on those cases, rather than omitting part of it in others. Rather than a string of headlines that read "Crazy (insert gender) kills 5," I'd rather see "Police: Wife kills husband over abuse."

George: Substituting "deadly rage" for "insanity" is sugarcoating? Seriously? I can't see anything soft or sweetened about the idea of a person whose anger has so detached them from ethics or reasoning that they're pumping bullets into someone that wasn't trying to kill them first.

It is obvious from the fact that he killed his wife, 5 children and then himself that the guy is insane. What's left to know is what drove this insane man to act like this. So what if it is the wife that broke up with him and that motivated the guy to do it. If that's what happen than that's what should be reported.

Nobody's blaming nobody there, only reporting things. They can't defend either the wife nor accuse the man, they should just report what happened. You can't expect moral judgement on a piece.

I agree somewhat.
On the one hand, the focus should not be on the wife's actions, and it should hardly be claimed that she "drove him" or "spurned him" to kill his entire family.
But he didn't commit that act for absolutely no reason; there was an impetus, even though he didn't deal with it in anything near a remotely correct manner. It would be disingenuous for the headlines to read "Man killed family, self because he was mentally unstable". Obviously he was unstable, but people want to know what he experienced that made him want to kill his family.

How's this, then?

Man poisoned by anxious masculinity and entitlement kills wife and children after wife divorces him, challenging his perceived dominance over his family

Better?

Endor - that's just silly. You're reading whatever you want into the headlines, and then blaming them for saying it. "Breakup" doesn't have to be the wife's fault, for example. By reading the wife's fault into the headline, you're adding information that isn't there, and then accusing the headline of putting the blame on the wife. That's idiotic.
It's also idiotic to act like the wife's actions had nothing to do with what the husband did. They did have something to do with it. Causation does not imply blame. Nobody is blaming the wife here.

Fernando - just the kids and self, not his wife. (This also goes to SarahMC).

Sarah - I can see you never worked at a newspaper. If you can put that into 5-7 words, we'll have something to talk about.
But more seriously, this is again a matter of putting opinion into the journalistic work rather than simply reporting the facts. The journalist cannot claim to have knowledge of the internal workings of the man's mind. That's why normally, the supposed reason is provided by reference to what the police said. Much like in academic writing, you have to provide a source for something you cannot possibly know by yourself. Unless you're writing an opinion column, that is. Then you can just make stuff up.

Actually, Dubi, your painful cluelessness is just silly and idiotic. You're denying what's there because you don't really understand the issue.

I'd like to say i can't believe that you went from that right into blaming the wife (while badly pretending not to be blaming the wife, of course), but I'm not. By saying anything she did CAUSED him to COMMIT MULTIPLE MURDER, you are blaming her and, at the same time, absolving him. I'm sure you'll launch into another round of badly thought-out denial. can't wait to be bored to death by that.

This man committed these acts. They're his fault. He has no excuses. And that's what the headlines should make clear.

That you didn't catch the obvious sarcasm in SarahMC's suggested headline makes it very clear you're not exactly up on the issues being discussed here (and was very amusing).

__

"It would be disingenuous for the headlines to read “Man killed family, self because he was mentally unstable”."

So it's "disingenuous" to simply state what happened and why?

"Obviously he was unstable, but people want to know what he experienced that made him want to kill his family."

What you're really saying is people want to know who to blame for his committing murder. As long as the killer is a "nice" white straight guy, everyone wants to know what "drove" him to become a criminal. He's never to blame, something/someone MADE him do it. See the commentary re: the craigslist killer or the bike path rapist for more. Everyone's always looking to not blame the actual criminal.

He was a selfish douche suffering from an extreme entitlement complex who'd previously been in trouble for being abusive toward his wife and the children he murdered. There was something wrong with HIM, hence her wanting to leave him. that's why he committed murder. Nothing she did made him do anything. It was merely what he used to justify his actions. HE was the problem.

Claiming it was her leaving that drove him to commit murder - even after it's been made clear that he had a history of violence and other problems, is disingenuous.

Wow, Endor, you should go on the road with your brilliant mind reading act.

she looked up some headlines from the Andrea Yates case. This case is relevant because it involved a woman who murdered her kids, and afterwards, she claimed that her husband had abused her. The headlines consistently left out any influence that the father might have had on the murder, and even portrayed him as grieving

Repeating Joshua's point, for those insisting headline writers are just trying to tell the whole story succinctly.

@Dubi & Todd, but especially at Todd - Are you f-ing delusional? THE MAN KILLED HIS 5 KIDS AND YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT "Oh, let's all be impartial!" Read my words: HE-KILLED-HIS-5-KIDS!! This isn't about a conflict in the Middle East, this isn't about how corrupt Politician X was and this isn't about whether Commercial Z was sexist or not. THIS IS ABOUT A MAN WHO MURDERED HIS 5 KIDS.

Calling him (in Todd's words) "bugsh*t insane" is NOT some horribly biased stance, it's a FACT. Saying that "the breakup/wife" triggered it is not really so relevant, considering the fact that someone who is capable of killing their five kids would be pretty mentally unstable in the first place.

In simple words, we should assume that ANYTHING could have set him off. And they specifically state that HE WAS ABUSIVE; it would have happened some time, who knows, the victim could have been HER. You want a why? The why is there: "He was an abusive prick who saw her & her kids as little more than items" And yet, why is Todd trying to humanize him, like certain media outlets?

George: Let's get something settled right off. I found two dictionary definitions for humanize:

1. to make humane, kind, or gentle.
2. to make human.

I don't have to humanize the murderer according to the second definition because....HE WAS A HUMAN BEING. We don't get to dehumanize someone whenever it's convenient for us.

If you were implying that I was trying to make the murderer seem more "humane, kind or gentle," then I have to put your own question back to you: "Are you f-ing delusional?" If you re-read my posts, it's pretty obvious what I think about the murderers in these articles. I believe "bugsh*t crazy," "weak," "pathetic," and "maladjusted" were a few of the highlights.

Maybe our major source of disagreement comes in terms of what we feel is the media's job. To quote from your first post in this thread:

"I think that this DEFINITELY should have been a headline, without including the breakup/wife element. Makes it harder for others to 'sympathize' with the murderer as an anti-hero or 'a man who got spurned'. "

I don't see it as the media's job to encourage me to sympathize with anyone any more than it is their job to forbid me from sympathizing with anyone. I see the media's job as answering-- to the best of its ability--who, what, where, when, why, and how without regard to the attributes of the people in the articles (race, gender, income, influence, level of power, religion, sexuality, etc).

But I don't see the inclusion of a motivating factor, EVEN ONE THAT I THINK IS FAULTY REASONING AND EMOTIONAL WEAKNESS AT ITS WORST, to be the same as attempting to sway my sympathies. I also see articles that omit this--as in the case of women who kill men over abuse/in self defense--to be missing information and broken.

I would rather see "Police: Dad kills 5 because wife was leaving him" AND "Police: Woman kills husband because of abuse" rather than either "Crazy person kills (x)" or "Emotionally unhinged jerk kills for bogus reason."

The "Crazy person kills (x)" headline doesn't give me all the information. And that final headline...it's MY job to make those value judgments, not the media outlet's.

These domestic violence people are so stupid enough to kill for anger.. what a disgrace..!!!!!

Kids are innocent. They aren't soppose to pay for the parents actions. Domestic violence is not a way to take out your anger.

One woman's struggle to get back on track after surviving a horrific sexual assault.

We are trying to help the woman who is a survivor of the terrible attack in Stamford in 2006 and is now trying to help her children deal with it that awful day.

This is a clip from her site:

In October 2006, I was sexually assaulted at gunpoint in front of my three and five year- old children in the parking garage of the Stamford Marriott Hotel. The attacker is now serving a 20- year sentence.

Unfortunately, my children and I will serve a lifetime sentence as a result of this experience. Although we are fortunate to receive support and counseling, this incident continues to be a source of considerable pain and difficulty for both my children and me.