Travel trouble, gun restrictions and no more ‘Mr Trump’: the trials of life as a felon
A loss of the honorific ‘Mr’ in the UK’s Daily Telegraph may be just the start, after the former president was found guilty in his hush-money trial
Jonathan Yerushalmy
Fri 31 May 2024 14.00 CEST
It’s not yet clear whether it will cost him the election, but the guilty verdicts against Donald Trump in a New York hush-money trial may make it harder for him to own a gun, travel to Canada or be approved for a mortgage. It could also change how he is referred to in some newspapers.
Honorifics
It’s unlikely to be at the forefront of the former president’s mind as he reflects on the verdict, but one immediate consequence is that Trump will probably lose the honorific title of “Mr” in the news pages of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
The Telegraph’s style guide states: “Defendants in criminal court cases … are to be referred to with their honorific Mr, Mrs or Miss: the newspapers and website should share the court’s presumption of innocence. On conviction they lose the honorific, although if cleared on appeal they reclaim it.”
In its front-page story on Friday, it appears the paper has already applied the rule: the former president is referred to as “Trump” throughout the copy, while his former lawyer Michael Cohen is also not afforded an honorific, having been sentenced to prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, the two women to whom Trump was accused of making hush-money payments, are referred to with the title “Ms” throughout.
The former president has been spared the same fate in the US newspaper of record, however. In 1973 the New York Times updated its own style guide to say that with “very rare exceptions” those convicted of a crime would no longer be denied an honorific.
“We will no longer omit the ‘Mr.’ before the names of those who, as the present style states, have been convicted of crime or who have unsavory reputations known without question to be deserved,” the paper’s then managing editor, AM Rosenthal, said.
and more at
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... cted-felon