argia.eus
INPRIMATU
BAD SAYING
Ellipsis of violence
  • The ellipsis is one of the main features of a journalistic style, which obliges the reader to read carefully and interpret the texts rigorously, so that I guess what the ellipsis raises. This is the result of a title from the journal El Mundo in its edition of Valencia: “A woman has died in a home in Rojales and her partner has been arrested.” Reading this, it is legitimate to ask whether the woman died in a shock and falling from the balcony, for example, and whether she was arrested by the police for driving drunk to her partner.
Santi Leoné @ororostorm 2019ko apirilaren 12a

On other occasions, like the bad movie trailers, the press headlines tell us a story that we will not find if we read the news: “A man has been arrested for murdering his wife, who had been claiming euthanasia for months,” a news from El Español said. When there is no violence, it stands out perfectly who killed; when it comes to violence, it hides a sleek ellipse: a woman has died, her partner has been arrested.

In view of this type of journalism, it is better understood that many judges do not see the rape on several occasions when the woman has been forced to have sex with force and against her will – whose refusal is persecuted in a great ellipse – but are willing that the man who helped his wife to die with dignity, according to El Español, murdered his wife.

The irony is that the law created by women to protect themselves from male violence has been used to divert the debate about euthanasia; in short, the malign lines of the press and the malicious use of the law have the same objective: to reaffirm the power of the system over the bodies of women, the life and death of women.