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Friday, August 27, 2010
A responsible headline?
My home page is msnbc.com. One of their headlines was this:
No blacks allowed to be class president, school says
Needless to say, I was shocked. I thought, “Can that possibly be in 2010?”
Well, when I read the story, it turned out that the headline was completely misleading. One, they just reversed the policy in an emergency board meeting (shouldn’t the headline read, “School board reverses racist policy,” or some such thing?). And two, the policy, which has been in effect for 30 years, was actually this:
Whites and blacks alternate offices. This year only whites were allowed to run for president and blacks for vice president. Last year it was the reverse. So the headline could just as easily, and accurately, have read:
No whites allowed to be class vice-president, school says
And of course it should say “school used to say” since the policy is no longer in effect.
Now, of course the policy of alternating races is ridiculous, but that is a far cry from, “No blacks allowed to run for president.”
Are legitimate news agencies allowed to mislead readers in order to get them to read the articles? Is that ethical? I really don’t know.
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