Showing posts with label reporting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reporting. Show all posts

Friday, May 14, 2010

Careless Headlining

Well, "careless" unless it's intended to be "provocative," to use an overused word.

Here's a screenshot from The Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet for today:

As you see, the headline offers the declarative statement NBC Cancels Law & Order. However, a reading of the blurb immediately reveals that a more accurate headline might have been NBC Might Cancel Law & Order or NBC to Cancel Law & Order? or any of a number of other variations. The point is that until NBC makes an announcement, everything is speculative. But the Daily Beast's headline makes it sound like a done deal.

This sort of inattention to detail (which I assume to be the case) is a bad thing in general where reporting is concerned, but in a publication such as Cheat Sheet, which exists primarily to be skimmed, it's especially nasty. I can't believe that I'm the only one who merely peruses the headlines of two-thirds of the daily dose of Cheat Sheet, pausing only occasionally to read the blurb on stories that interest me, very rarely clicking through to the source publication. Except for the fact that I'm interested enough in Law & Order to stop and read the blurb, I would come away thinking that the show's cancellation was a done deal.

Of course, it's only a television show. One hopes the editors of Cheat Sheet would be a little more careful if they're referencing, say, the death of a public figure or a declaration of war or something.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Man Bites Dog!

I'm as keen as anybody to see an end to excessive early-termination fees on cellphone contracts, but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

This is the headline on G4's The Feed ("The Only News You Need to Know") in re the preliminary ruling by an Alameda County, California, Superior Court Judge that orders Sprint Nextel to pay California customers $18.2 million as part of a class-action suit over early-termination fees:

Sprint Nextel Paying Back Termination Fees

Which sort of implies that Sprint Nextel has started writing out all those checks. Which it isn't. In fact, yours truly can hardly make himself believe that Sprint Nextel won't appeal the decision. Which, by the way, is a preliminary decision. In one state.

The Feed's article's opening paragraph is more measured, and more accurate:
    Sprint Nextel just got ordered to refund $18.25 million to California customers who paid early termination fees to get out of their mobile contracts. A judge is also requiring the company to relinquish $54.75 million in early termination fees it charged that went unpaid by Cali consumers.
Read the whole thing here.

This is hardly the first time I've wondered whether the writers of headline even read the item in question.