About 40 years ago, the Sentinel published a news story about how the U.S. Forest Service was going to start moving against illegal squatter cabins on the Stikine River. Seemed reasonable that the agency would enforce the law and evict people who had no legal right to build or park their float on public land.
The Forest Service announced its effort and we published under a headline something like, “Forest Service to evict illegal cabins.”
The agency’s overly sensitive central Southeast spokesperson at the district offices in Petersburg called to complain. He thought our headline was too negative. He asked, “Couldn’t you have written a more positive headline on the story. Something like, “Forest Service allows legal cabins to remain’”?
His request seemed silly then and sounds just as silly now. The Forest Service spokesman knew that the headline sets the tone for a news report and, sometimes, readers only look at the headline and skip the rest, making the headline all the more important. He wanted a positive headline, even if it was misleading.
Unfortunately, not all journalists or self-proclaimed journalists who publish their own opinion websites believe in fairness and accuracy in headlines. Sensational sells, hype helps drive clicks to the site, and emotions encourage what is called “confirmation bias,” which is when people look for “news” that reinforces their own beliefs.
Case in point: The Must Read Alaska website, as conservative and anti-Biden, anti-government, anti-Democrats as any opinion site in the state, last week posted a report that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had given the go-ahead for children ages 5 through 11 to get the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19.
Hard to politicize that announcement, you would think. Nothing mandatory about the vaccine. No penalties for families that decline the vaccine. Nothing in the CDC decision about children running out and getting vaccinated without parental or guardian consent.
Yet the headline on Must Read Alaska was as inflammatory as could be: “CDC says go ahead and shoot the kids with Pfizer Covid vaccine.”
No doubt the website editor is not suggesting that health care professionals will shoot children. Nor is she specifically promoting violence or aggression, either toward children or the medical personnel who will administer the vaccine to children. But “shoot the kids” is irresponsible heading writing, likely intended to be witty, snarky and snotty — and provocative.
There is a line between witty and consciously selecting a verb to agitate and stir up emotions. The headline crossed that line. The report itself was accurate, just the facts. But the headline? It’s a good example of what’s bad about opinion websites. Fairness takes second seat to pushing an agenda. Responsibility is flexible if it gets in the way.
It would have been bad journalism to announce that the Forest Service was going to allow legal cabins to live out their lives in peace and harmony until the wood rotted away, while downplaying the fact that the agency intended to post notices on illegal cabins. So, too, is it reckless to use the word “shoot” in a headline when the difference between “shoot” and “a shot” is as wide as the difference between an illegal and legal river cabin.
Anyone presenting themselves as a journalist owes it to the public to get it right, especially in the headline.
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