Evidence, But of What?, a Mini-Essay on Form

Does form need to support content? Or is it better when form does the opposite?
News item from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Woman wounds Amtrak officer at 30th Street
An Amtrak police officer was shot in the foot yesterday morning by a woman at 30th Street Station. The shooting happened in the vicinity of the McDonald’s at the station about 11 a.m., according to Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham. Philadelphia police took the female suspect into custody.
The circumstances of the shooting and the source of the weapon were under investigation, Graham said. Amtrak did not release the names of the officer and suspect. The officer’s injuries were not life-threatening, Graham said. The officer was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital and was in stable condition.
The news short is a form as surely as the sonnet. The news short generates mystery through compression, omission and conventions of tone, which take outlandish human events with an absolutely straight face. The best examples require the collaboration of a professional reporter and a very professional editor, neither of whom has observed the event. There is a tragedy in being shot in the foot, and probably an ugly story here. But tragedy and ugliness have been erased by newsification. The bizarre hilarity is not unlike Ashbery forcing surrealist comedy into the complicated traditional sestina form as in “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape,” where Popeye is the subject. Both are inspired deadpan mismatches of form and content—though in the case of “Woman wounds Amtrak officer at 30th St,” one suspects that reporter and editor are not actually keeping a straight face, because neither ever has anything but a straight face.