Newspaper headlines vs articles (a response to @jdc325)
Posted by Christie Malry on February 13, 2012 at 10:52 pm
jdc325 complains, with some justification, about accuracy in the press. Finding and pointing out stupid errors in print and online media represents a very rich vein for bloggers, including me.
Newspapers such as Dacre’s Daily Mail though, and I’m not making this bit up, are allowed to print pretty much any headline they like. As long as they make clear at some point that the headline is untrue. Perhaps in, say, paragraph 19 of the article.
This is problematic. Not everyone will read the whole article. A few will read right to the end, some will look at the pictures and maybe read the first couple of paragraphs. But everyone will have been exposed to the headline.
The Poynter Institute found that online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read; broadsheet participants read an average of 62 percent of stories they selected; and tabloid participants read an average of 57 percent. They also note that readers described as ‘scanners’ viewed headlines and other page display elements without reading much text. It’s clear that some people might be influenced by a headline without ever reading the attached article.
His main point is that discrepancies between the semantic content of a headline (and/or its accompanying photo, where applicable) may mislead a casual reader. However, I remain unconvinced that this risk should lead to regulatory intervention:
- The newspapers want you to read the full article. They make their money from convincing advertisers that they have a loyal readership who spend their time poring over every single column inch. So they will reel you in via the headline and perhaps a nice photo. Yes, that's indeed precisely what jdc325 did, with deliberate irony, with his own article.
- It's simply unreasonable to expect the headline to represent a synopsis of the entire article. It (plus picture, etc etc) is there to entice people towards the article. Necessarily, a headline will contain less information than the full article and, in order to meet the space limitations, will need to take shortcuts to get its point across. A short headline could never encapsulate all the semantic content of the full article. Indeed, in my view, expecting it to do so risks misunderstandings of #twitterjoketrial proportions.
- The very idea that newspapers such as the Daily Express and Daily Mail intend to mislead their readership by publishing accurate articles under inaccurate headlines is - and I think I'm being as charitable as I can possibly be here - unproven.
- It's unfair to summarise the Press Complaints Commission's judgment as leaving newspapers "free to print headlines which are misleading or inaccurate as long as there’s something in the article itself that contradicts the headline". In fact their judgment says that headlines must be considered in the context of the article as a whole. Unlike the obviously tongue-in-cheek headline and picture, it's not clear that jdc325 realises the bias in his own summary of the PCC's judgement. There are shades of Matthew 7:5 here.
- And I'm not sure that we should be seeking regulatory intervention to deal with the risk that some readers might misunderstand an article by failing to read all of it. What sort of regulatory intervention could possibly address possible lack of comprehension of a varied readership?
Instead, I'd say we must stick with what we have. Let the PCC do what it does. It can improve, for sure, and one would expect the independent Lord Hunt to start making his mark. Let bloggers fill the space to clarify those areas that the PCC can't reasonably address. If nothing else, it gives us something to write about. Some day we might even find a way to attract people to read it!
[...] 14/2/12 - this blogger has argued that my summary of the PCC's judgement in this case is unfair. I think they are correct. [...]
I don't disagree with you on points one and three. I accept that newspapers want people to read whole articles online (and, when they're finished, click on others). I don't think I claimed in my post that newspapers intend to mislead their readership by publishing accurate articles under inaccurate headlines (not that you've accused me of doing so - I just wanted to make the point that I don't claim to know the intentions of editors). My contention is not that newspapers don't want people to read whole articles or that they intend to mislead, it's that their headlines are often misleading and inaccurate. Perhaps they're simply careless as to whether their headlines mislead the casual reader (and, sometimes, every reader who does not finish the entire article). I should have made this clear in the post.
I think I agree with (2) but would argue that some headlines go far beyond simply "taking short cuts" to get the point across. Some headlines are not just misleading because they are (perhaps necessarily) inaccurate simplifications of the truth, they are actually untrue.
Which brings me to (4). I think you're right that my summary was unfair and I have edited my post to retract my summary of the PCC's position.
In Cat\'s Cradle, Claire Minton intuits that Philip Castle is gay, just by reading the index he prepared for his book. OK, so it\'s fiction, but I do believe that it\'s virtually impossible to write anything without leaking something about yourself. Certainly this will be true in any sort of opinion piece.
I\'d rather a world in which we write our colourful pieces, some of which will point out eloquently why everything in the Daily Express is false, than one in which only that which is demonstrably and objectively true can be printed. Because, as sure as eggs are eggs, some day that standard will be used to persecute bloggers.
Kind regards,
cm
I recall reading an article in the Daily Telegraph a few months ago that was in its entirety in direct contradiction of the headline placed over it. I rather suspected that the subject of the article contradicted editorial policy on the newspaper, so they simply placed it under a headline that was consistent with editorial policy. Who was the headline there to mislead? Perhaps the editor himself.