No, the doctor did not declare him deceased

When Cookie was a journalism student, the first rule of writing news was get the facts, and then verify those facts.  Without verifiable facts, your story is hearsay, worthless, gossip.  The second rule of thumb was if you doubted those verifiable facts, double down and verify them again. 

Do you the reader see a pattern?  FACTS matter, and what matters better be based on facts.   

Since the rise of the internet where anyone can call themselves a news site, and the rise of "entertainment" masquerading for news, we see to have a crisis of confidence.  Too many people prefer to hear what makes them feel validated, and they love to mock people who put a value on truth.  And not enough people who want the truth don't stand up for standards. 

Add to this the culture of everybody getting a certificate for showing up and you get what I came across today, and why I needed someone like my friend to back me up with the AP style manual. In this case that I am railing about is that of declaring someone legally dead. Now there are several types of death, aside from the good old fashioned "when you are dead, you're dead" school of thought. 

There is such a state as Civil Death.  And there is such a thing Social Death.  

But today, we're talking about DEAD - as in no longer showing signs of life, lung, heart, and/or brain function dead.

This raised itself up because Cookie was reading a news blurb by a radio station.  Apparently, a car ran a stop sign, hit a motorcyclist, and the injured man was transported to the hospital where the ER doctors declared the victim dead, as in declared dead.   Not Dead on Arrival (DOA) but in this case, the victim showed signs of life but died in the ER. 

Get it?  Got it? Good.

The problem is that the news outlet stated that "where the doctors declared him deceased."

Hello? 

"The deceased...", sure.  "The decedent..." alright. 

But declared deceased?  Huh?

So I contacted said news outlet and said "this is incorrect. One is declared dead by a doctor, not deceased."  

I didn't do it because I needed to be right, but because it was a violent accident and a terrible way to go for that young man.  

The answer, that I got back simply stunned me:

"Hello, I am the station's wordsmith..."

Stop right there.  

Writers, reporters, editors, columnists, feature reporters, traffic eye in the sky, yes.  Wordsmith?  No.  Oh, no, no, no.  The Wordsmith continued:

"...as you'll agree, 'dead' and 'deceased' are practically the same words..."

Sweet Smoking Jesus!  NO!  First, do not paint me into that corner with getting me to agree that words mean the same when it is the legal action - the declaration of death - at the heart of this matter.  And yes, a duckpin bowling ball and a tennis ball are both round balls, but neither can be substituted to do what the other was designed to do.

One is not declared deceased in hard news. One is declared DEAD. Declaring one "deceased" sounds cliche, and as the AP Style manual will tell you, avoid cliche and euphemisms.  

But the Wordsmith promised to get back with me and the Wordsmith did:

"There is a certain truthiness to being declared deceased...and English is a constantly evolving language... "

Reader, if I had a brick wall, I would be banging my head against it. 

Another thing, the "man is pronounced dead" by the doctor.  Why?  Because to say say that the man "pronounced deceased" sounds really bad.  Try saying that allowed, or show an English teacher.  It is affected.

To me, "deceased" is for feature articles, for obituaries, for (and now I am dating myself) the late Harold Denzer, clasping his hands while asking my grandmother what the music the "deceased" would have preferred ("Perhaps "Whispering Hope, and other songs of hope and eternal life?") 

Even us Jews (when I wear that yarmulke) know, when you are dead, you are dead. You are going into that Light of G_d because that's what we believe. There is no everlasting life for Jews. You leave life's stage and you go into the light of God and you are dead, as in not coming back, dead. People who use "truthiness" as their fulcrum to try and cleave an argument from where there is none to split off.  This kind of logic is what we get when someone builds a society of "certificates" for just showing up.  

So I did some searching.  One newspapers(dot)com, one of the largest databases of searchable newspapers, "Declared Dead" - 321,662 occurrences. "Declared Deceased" - 2,665 matches. 

The problem with truth is that Wordsmiths only care about what sounds poetic, soft, winsome.  Whereas old news people like Cookie want facts.  I want news that is meaty, lean and something I can chew on and ponder. People like the Wordsmith only care about pablum, that goes down easy. 

And that ain't me.