"The police shot my friend"

[Callous1970]

Move to the US. We know how to shoot our crooks and get it reported accurately... well, except for poor, innocent George Zimmerman.

[Xanjori]

That makes 0 sense.
I have plenty of friends who aren't nice guys.
What it sounds like is a quote from someone the reporter interviewed about the incident, apparently he interviewed the guys friend who was there, how is that biased?

You believe that interviewing the friends to someone that was shot by the police isnt' biased? I mean lets take for example the friends statement "The police shot him twice, straight in the heart." When in fact the policeman shot twice, but only shot the man once. Would you have known that if you hadn't read a different article or been informed by someone else?

[Deleted]

It's not inherently biased insofar as how much you read into it, as a friend is merely someone who you know well;

2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.

However, i can see the possibility of others leaning here on the phrasing that suggests otherwise.

Emotively however, it can inspire an emotional reaction - When people think "Friend" they automatically connect it with trust, and reliability.

And naturally of course, friends have bias.

[lockedout]

You believe that interviewing the friends to someone that was shot by the police isnt' biased? I mean lets take for example the friends statement "The police shot him twice, straight in the heart." When in fact the policeman shot twice, but only shot the man once. Would you have known that if you hadn't read a different article or been informed by someone else?

See now you are talking about anything but the title.

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Emotively however, it can inspire an emotional reaction - When people think "Friend" they automatically connect it with trust, and reliability.

He wasn't my friend so I don't trust or rely on that person.

[Xenofreak]

Here's the thing, that title is biased. Do you see the phrasing as "friend" to mean something different than "man"? No? Well that's all well and good. Plenty of people do. Some people rationally digest what they read, but others don't. I think it's pretty safe to say most of us have seen that countless times in the way people react to news stories. By saying "The police shot my friend." they're getting those who respond based on emotion and are easily manipulated to start off sympathizing with the friend of the guy who got shot. Does the title get everyone to think that way? No. But that's because there are some of us that realize even Hitler had friends, so we wouldn't really care to listen to one of them bitching about how people were mean to Hitler.

[Deleted]

He wasn't my friend so I don't trust or rely on that person.

Doesn't matter even if you deny it it works.
Did you root for the Stormtroopers in Star Wars? probably not.

You can easy anthropomorphize inanimate objects like robots it will work in this case too.
If its not some newsstory but some kind of "indepth" reportage its ok even for serious journalist to use that kind of headline.

To have such a "spin" would be in this case only because its trying to show us a certain vantage point to connect with the reader
If that is the format it was never meant to be "neutral" in the firstplace.

If its simple news journalism its clearly subpar.