Media Watch
How Coverage of Pedestrian Fatalities Dehumanizes Victims and Absolves Drivers
An analysis of news headlines in Canada identified rhetorical patterns that deflect culpability from drivers.
March 28, 2018
This “War on Cars” Video Will Defend America From Transit-Riding Infidels
PragerU's latest video, released this week, is about a fundamental American value: driving big, gas-guzzling cars and not using other modes of transportation, because freedom.
August 3, 2017
Self-Driving Cars Should Accommodate People, Not the Other Way Around
You think victim-blaming is bad now? Making everyone walk or bike with a "don't hit me" device would further penalize the most vulnerable.
July 25, 2017
El Paso’s Suburbs Are Getting Sidewalks and Local TV News Talked to Pedestrians About It
A refreshing change from the typical NIMBY-centric coverage of "controversial" sidewalks.
May 31, 2017
Blaming People for Wearing Black Wins the Prize for Anti-Pedestrian Idiocy
It takes a special kind of callousness to say that pedestrians are making city streets dangerous by wearing black. And yet, that's exactly what the Seattle Times did this weekend.
May 31, 2017
The Backstory and Aftermath of Philly’s Teen Bicycle Freeway Takeover
Perhaps you saw video on social media this week showing hundreds of teenagers riding bikes, popping wheelies on a Philadelphia expressway. It was an unauthorized freeway takeover that ought to have brought a smile to even the sourest face.
April 28, 2017
Popular Support for Bike Lanes Is Precisely the Problem for Atlanta Columnist Bill Torpy
A plan to put an extra-wide suburban Atlanta thoroughfare on a road diet, adding protected bike lanes in the process, has come under fire from a local columnist with an unhealthy vendetta against people who ride bikes.
April 25, 2017
The 4 Biggest Sins Committed By Reporters Covering Pedestrian Deaths
Each year, motorists on American streets kill nearly 5,000 pedestrians. The loss of life is enormous -- equivalent to 12 jumbo jets crashing with no survivors -- but the steady drumbeat of pedestrian fatalities doesn't register as an urgent public safety crisis. Maybe it would seem more urgent if the press covered pedestrian deaths as the preventable outcome of a broken system, instead of a series of random "accidents."
October 3, 2016
It’s Time for the AP to Nix the Term “Accident” to Describe Car Collisions
Earlier this year, the NYPD adopted a policy to stop using the term "accident" to describe traffic collisions. The San Francisco police department made similar changes a few months later. The problem with the term "accident," of course, is that it implies no one was at fault -- that traffic injuries and deaths are just random, unpreventable occurrences. It's part of a cultural permissiveness toward dangerous driving, which in turn contributes to the loss of life.
December 11, 2013
Freakonomics Hucksters: “Save the Earth, Drive Your Car”
Remember those wizards of counter-intuition, the Freakonomics guys? You know, the ones who told their audience that it's safer to drive drunk than to walk drunk? Well, in his latest piece for NPR's Marketplace, which ran with the headline "Save the Earth, Drive Your Car," Stephen Dubner talks to Clemson University's Eric Morris and arrives at the ridiculous conclusion that driving is greener than transit.
November 15, 2012