Banana Lee Fishbones, over at Metroblogging Portland, beat me to the punch this morning, posting about KGW’s use of the word “female” to distinguish an officer involved in a shooting in Clackamas. Other stations also mentioned the officer gender—which, as far as I could tell, was irrelevant to the story.

Does it matter? Will people be willing to “let it slide” since it was a girl? I think this falls in the same category as headlines like “Man hoisted by own petard” vs “Black man hoisted by own petard”. Why does it matter? Because “White man hoisted by own petard” would never be a headline. It doesn’t tell me anything useful about the story does it?

That was the same thought I had while watching KGW this morning, and hearing the (female!) anchor stipulate that the officer was female. So what, I thought?

Looks like someone at KGW reads Metroblogging Portland—the station’s website manager weighed in.

Thanks for flagging our kgw.com headline on the officer-involved shooting.

We agree gender wasn’t the most important part of this story, and in our updated report have removed that reference from the headline.

Frank Mungeam
Site Manager, kgw.com

(I have to disagree with Frank, though. He says gender “wasn’t the most important part” of the story, so it doesn’t belong in the story. I say it’s not important at all, and doesn’t need to be pointed out in the text, either. What matters are things like the circumstances of the shooting, and how long the officer’s been wearing a badge.)