27 January 2017

The Dubious Reliability of Headlines

I used to be something of a news junkie. Let's just say that at previous jobs I had a lot of time on my hands but had to look like I was still being productive. I couldn't just pull out a book and start annotating so I read a ton of internet content. This was in a simpler time for the web (roughly 2007-2010, which feels like an eternity ago in internet time), but I still spent a good chunk of my time seething over the actions of others as reported to the various sources I consumed.

I don't read a lot of news today. Mostly I think it is garbage, even the stuff that isn't clearly fake. Here are two example from my reading in the past 24 hours.

The first comes from the sports site Deadspin which published the following article about Kansas coach Bill Self's response to the rape allegations in the players' dorm. Here is the article's title:


Bill Self Discusses "Distraction" Of "Very Serious Alleged Allegation" Of Rape At Men's Basketball Dorm

"Distraction" is in scare quotes. These players are "distracted" by the rape of a 16 year old girl. Boohoo for them. SMH, Self, I can't even with this.

Is this what the article states, though? Here is the Self quote in response, it is worth noting, to a journalist who asked if the accusation was a distraction.

It’s not a distraction, it’s a major distraction. Certainly, most importantly, in general, when you talk about distraction, you talk about how it affects us. But more importantly, there’s an obviously very serious alleged allegation that has been made. So that trumps figuring how to guard Monk or Fox to be real candid with you. It’s been a distraction and one that we’ll deal with and our players will deal with. It’s not what we want to do but it’s what’s required at this time.

Nowhere in that quote does he claim "distraction" with nefarious intent as the title so clearly implies. In fact, Self says the very opposite--finding out the truth is monumentally more important than figuring out who guards which Kentucky player. The headline makes Self look like a rape apologist, a single-minded basketball only automaton. But he's not. And I say this as anything but a Jayhawk enthusiast.

Here's another example that is perhaps more pernicious. This was a New York Times headline that blew up on my Twitter feed yesterday.

Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’


That's bad, right? Leave the press alone, you alt-right d-bag! Surely, though, the New York Times would never mislead its readers with a shoddy headline. Let's check, just to make sure.

WASHINGTON — Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.

Oh, so he didn't say anything like what the headline implied? That's strange. Bannon is only saying what the media should have figured out in early November: they do not have their finger on the pulse of America. Which, given the fact that no one saw a Trump election coming, ought to be pretty obvious.

But here's the thing. Very few people actually read past the headlines. NPR proved this a couple of years ago with their April Fools headline that literally said "Why Doesn't America Read Anymore?" The copy of the article openly admitted that this was an April Fool's joke but the Facebook comments people posted remained blissfully unaware of this fact. Many were the laments about the sad state of reading in America. I blame this in part on The Onion. I have a head stuffed full of headline titles from The Onion but I can't tell whether the article itself was any good.

The net effect is that we are all deceived as to what is true. Everything is spun. Everything is molded, curated, and crafted to fit the confirmation bias of whoever the target audience might be. There is no room for nuance, for difficult truth, for self-reflection. Those things don't yield clicks like the hyperbolic headlines do. 

The fact that the media doesn't get this strikes me as sad, until I realize that this is not what people demand from the media anymore. Those qualities above are just the ones we seem to have jettisoned in this age. The media reflects us, who we are today, and that is sad for all parties implicated.


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