Sunday, December 18, 2005

Headlines Revisited

After running a number of misleading headlines, the public editor of the N&O, Ted Vaden, decided to address the issue in his Sunday column. He specifically mentioned one of my complaints from earlier in the week, but his explanation was that the headline matched the story, so all is well.

He doesn't note that the story itself was lousy, so matching the headline to the story doesn't really deserve kudos. My request is that the N&O match the headline to the news. The news that day was that the president made a major foreign policy speech in which he commented on a number of important issues regarding Iraq. The headline did not reflect the news, but rather put a negative spin on one minor comment in a multi-paragraph speech.