Teddy Bear Row Teacher is Freed. This was the headline on Monday for the London Paper.  It’s a bold attack on linguistic inelegance, and a more subtle undermining of compassion and any discerning thought.

What was the name of the woman unfairly arrested, charged and imprisoned? I’ve read about her, I’ve seen the headlines and yet any sense of her as a real person going through a real ordeal has been hidden.

 “Teddy-Bear-Row”...Is this really all this was about? Why not “Heresy Row” or “Muhammad Row”, or “Row over influence of Christian School”? Is the opening description of “Briton Gillian Gibbons” how she would primarily describe herself? Is “the mother-of-two” the obvious way to describe someone whose twenty-five year old son is later quoted?

This is not just lazy journalism; it is the conveyance of lazy but widespread prejudices. They are slipped in by implication. As in advertising, words are jumbled together in a single noun to make a strong suggestion that would be shown up in a full statement.