I don’t know who started this, but I always feel frustrated when I see headline along the lines of “USA says” or “China signal”, countries are not people.

I don’t understand why don’t even the best news outlets put headlines like " Official x said this on official order on USA" Or something like that.

I really don’t understand who came up with this way of reporting where they report on officials as their country and I always thought that this is dumb.

  • Justin
    4•1 month ago

    Most people confuse the actions of a head of state and that country itself.

    “America is self centered and capitalist”, no that’s just Trump.

    “Russia is bloodthirsty and imperialistic”, no that’s just Putin.

    “China is totalitarian and hostile”, no that’s just Xi Jinping.

    Obviously you can blame democratic countries for electing their heads of state, but it’s unfortunately too common that people generalize about entire countries.

    I think the habit of attributing state actions to their capital makes more sense. eg “Washington denounces Moscow’s recent escalation”, etc.