Saturday Morning Ride - Ugliness

Good morning.

• Liz Gorman, a DC area photographer was sexually assaulted just north of DuPont Circle by a man on a bicycle. " Minding my own business, and a gentleman on a bicycle rides up behind me and sticks his hand up my skirt and fondles me," Gorman says. Several women responded that they too had been attacked by "a similar-sounding bicycling molester."
• Meanwhile police continue to look for the suspect in another sexual assault last week along the Four Mile Run trail. 
• A letter writer to the Post wonders why, in a story about a driver assaulting a bicyclist the Post referred to the victim of the assault only once by gender and repeatedly as “bicyclist,” “biker” and “cyclist.” I suspect it's because his being a cyclist was central to why he was assaulted, but his gender was not. Just as Gorman's gender was repeatedly stated because she was assaulted for being a woman, not for being a pedestrian (not to equate the two incidents, only the reporting on them). I'm always willing to criticize the media for lazy or sloppy reporting, but this wasn't such a case. 

Comments

[Jack]

I'm glad the original article about the assaulted cyclist made it very clear he was a cyclist, and made it clear that the driver was convicted for attacking a cyclist.

Also kudos to the article for saying the cyclist was "driving his bike". But I'm not so happy that the article said the cyclist was driving "down the middle of the road" with no indication of what that means. Some readers might conclude the rider was blocking traffic and/or being rude and/or breaking the law.

[SJE]

I don't think there was a nefarious purpose to using "cyclist" but, OTOH, I agree with the letter writer that it obscures the human riding the bike.