"Baby rescued from apartment after single-mother tragically died days earlier"
Didn't think it was that difficult
It's not, but then the headline wouldn't subconsciously bias you towards rage clicking.
I don't think the headline would make you rage click, it's pretty neutral. The over the top reaction to said headline however...
It's subtle, but it's absolutely designed to induce feelings of negative emotions to evoke a click. If you'd like to look into this field of study, search up "shadow patterns" or " dark patterns" as that's the modern design language meant for working with data on mass scale in order to drive engagement. (To the down voter, the fact you can't see it is both sad and the point of the design. Unfortunate because it's true. I've sat in these design meetings with software teams and marketing.)
They don't know she was a single mother. They don't know who she was because they weren't told. The father could have been on a business trip for all we know. That proposed headline injects one plausible guess as to why the baby would have been alone, but without any actual data to back it up.
It also fails to indicate that the baby was alone. You try to imply it by 'single mother', but whose to say that there wasn't someone else in the house that might have been important, like a sibling or extended family member? The detail that the infant was alone was key, but omitted in your version. Of course it's awkward to try to indicate the baby was alone without using the word 'left' in the context of a headline appropriate short sentence.
They could have injected the word "tragically" before dies for a bit more consideration, though people can see that the tragedy is pretty self evident.
I think that's a worse headline because it doesn't involve the sad imagery of a baby alone for 4 days. "Tragic" is a kitschy word to include in a headline. And neither your headline nor the one in the meme place the mother up-front.
Well ... Full disclosure. I'm not a journalist
As someone else in the comment section pointed out, this death and the infant's precarious situation probably could have been avoided if America's shitty for-profit healthcare system wasn't such a god awful shit show.
The original headline ignores the mother all together to put the focus completely on the child, seeking to engage potential readers with ragebait only to throw cold water on them in the article where they disclose the death of the mother. All in order to completely sidestep any discussion of why exactly a new mother would suddenly die in our country "with the greatest healthcare in the world!"
A statistic that is becoming more and more common.
Edit: there's also an overly heavy focus on dumping praise on the cops, which is ridiculous since they were simply doing their job.
Infant only suspect in mother's mysterious death
I... don't know, man, the info that she died is right there in the headline. I'm struggling to compose that sentence in English without using the word "left".
"Police rescue baby alone for days after mother dies" doesn't sound like English. "Police rescue baby alone after mother dies" sounds like the news is the baby doesn't have any other family and also sounds weird.
If you take motherhood out of it altogether it becomes more obvious, I suppose. "The man was left alone on a deserted island after the rest of the plane's crew died in the crash" is a perfectly valid way to frame that.
Blame English for using adjectives weird sometimes.
'Police rescue baby found alone after mother dies days earlier'
Not a native speaker, but it sounds off to me.
So i looked into it. Such deaths are not uncommon in the US. The issues that can cause maternal deaths can show up 24-48 hours after birth and the mother, having just gone through major traumatic body altering experience, may not trust her feelings that there is something wrong, and statistics show that neither do doctors. But in the US early release is the standard because maternity beds up time is money.
But i also learned of the Newborn and Mothers health protection act of 1996, that guarantee a stay of 48 hours vaginal or 96 hours c-section birth. And this must be covered by all medical insurance.
But x2. If the doctor agrees to an early dismissal, and the wife said anything but a full unquestionable rejection of the premise of early dismissal then they may be ejected. Which is a lot to ask of a new mother. At which point an advocate is the only way to reverse it. Husbands or family better be aware and on their shit i guess.
Note the story does not indicate the specific age of the baby or even that the cause of death is related to having given birth or something like post partum depression, which is also a potentially worrying cause over a longer term. It could have been an utterly accidental death or unrelated health condition.
You raise a valid set of concerns, but no indication whether it is pertinent to this story.
The article in question.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phoenix-baby-left-alone-after-mother-dies-rescued/
It does say the mother recently gave birth. One can reasonably assume that the child in question is who she gave birth to. No matter what, the title and the article are terribly written.
Edit: fixed link
Edit 2: here is a slightly more responsibly written article and title.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/phoenix-baby-saved-mother-death-b2779209.html
Right, i don’t have that information, but when looking this up i came across a comment that said deaths soon after birth are not uncommon and that unnerved me so i went down a rabbit hole. Not saying that this is directly related… i just had to tell someone my findings
Seems reasonable enough, and a good reason to encourage particular focus after birth in your neighborhood support circle.
Which hopefully you've fostered in general, but I certainly can't claim to have done so well on that front myself..
welcome to the orphan crushing machine that first crashes the mother. you also gotto love the slight "polices are heroes and caring human beings" twist.
Don't be ridiculous. The machine that crushes the mother is not the orphan crushing machine - that's the orphan making machine. Different part of the same pipeline. Don't confuse them - they are maintained by different companies.
Orphan Co. Limited ?
I thought you could say "I was left alone after my friend passed" or something. It doesn't mean my friend left me purposefully but rather I was just alone after he died
It's about the framing. The focus is on the baby being "left alone," with passive language implying that somebody did that to them. Meanwhile, the mother's death is treated as an afterthought, only relevant as a circumstance in the baby's story.
I think you can say that someone was "left alone" without any implication that it was done to them, just that it merely happened.
It doesn't imply that somebody did it to them. The baby was left alone by the circumnstances. It's kind of difficult to come up with as short a sentence that is reasonably possible to read without somehow using 'left alone' in it.
"Kind of difficult"
I'm not a native English speaker and I can easily come up with many alternatives that don't imply the baby was left alone purposely.
"left" is used all the time where no one was purposely doing anything. It doesn't imply that at all.
No, it does imply that. Completely and directly. Your obstinance does not make you correct.
A baby does not have agency of its own. If I 'left my keys on the counter', you SHOULD assume someone put them there, because they didn't fucking climb up there themselves. That's how reality works, let alone the English language...
"A baby was found alone days after its mother died."
It's truly not that difficult at all.
I hope that when the mother died, that all of her hardships and burdens sloughed away, and that she knows that her loved ones are safe so that she can rest in peace.
Then, I hope that all of that negative shit condenses itself into the world's most pristine Lego that haunts whoever came up with that tone and headline. When those who are responsible wear shoes, I hope that ghost Lego becomes a puddle.
I'm with you in the first half, but people are reading way too much into the connotation of "left alone". Anyone who at least read the full headline would not see the mother being accused of anything. "left alone" is merely descriptive and does not demand nor suggest that someone's actions or even negligence caused it.
Trying to write an accurate, comprehensive, short headline is tricky if trying to dance around this level of presumptuous offense.
Ah... bait.
Are they gonna charge her ghost?
Depends was she black?
Plus, "where was the father? huh??" I understand they could've separated, but he still had responsibilities towards this baby. So, only if the journalists had confirmed he was deceased long ago it would make sense to make this omission... but they should said so.
Seems like the authorities didn't release a lot of actionable details to the press. They only see the baby and have a short description of the scene. Not where the scene was or the identity of anyone or a hint as to how the mother died. The journalists are simply reporting the partial story without anything further to go on at the moment. The press likely will be bored of the incident well before the details would be available.
Mother's truly are nothing to our society
What part of this says that at all?
The part where mom being dead is a footnote, not the headline.
But it is in the headline....
