When you turn on the television or you’re checking your CNN or favorite news outlets app, the first thing you see is the headlines.
The headlines should give you an idea of what the news story is about
and you should be able to quickly weed through the stories that you are
interested in watching/reading or not. But when the
headline reads, “Balloon
Boy Politics: The Media's Embrace of Birth Contracalypse 2012.” What am I
supposed to make of this story? The context of what is being reported on is lost in the catchy phrasing of the headline.
While the news story really talked about the trends of
conversation that this election year would take, how President Obama's reelection strategy is now in jeopardy, and how we all expected to be talking about jobs and the economy leading up to November now we are all talking about birth control.. They make an even bigger deal of the recent contraception controversy and spend
the majority of the article discussing GOP candidates and the Catholic Church’s
reaction the new legislation.
Why do we have to come up with catchy titles to get people
to read the stories. If people really
care about getting the news they want, shouldn’t they read the story regardless
of the headline. Do the headlines take
away from the seriousness or the legitimacy of the stories that are being covered? I think so. Because while I am now informed about the the GOP candidates opinion of the recent birth control legislation and how the topics of discussion for this election cycle have changed, I'm still trying to figure out who they claim is crying wolf like the balloon boy.
I cannot stand the catchy headlines that really don’t correspond with the news story! They are completely miss leading and make me very angry when I take my time to read an irrelevant article.
ReplyDeleteI also completely agree that headlines are taking away from articles because I know many people that choose the stories they read based on the headlines.