Headlines

Headlines. Every story has one. It has to sum up the main thrust of an article in just a few words, depending on the amount of space the story gets. And I thought it was interesting that something as simple as a headline could be considered unethical. But my media ethics professor pointed out that some can be more inflammatory and one-sided than others. Take, for example, the front page news of the AJC vs. that of the New York Times yesterday. Both papers covered the speeches that Bush and Ahmadinejad made, but they used very different headlines to describe the events.

AJC: "Bush Calls Out Iran: Tough speech at U.N. labels regime a threat to peace."
NYT: "Leaders Spar Over Iran's Aims and U.S. Power."

See the difference? As much as I love the AJC and defend it (especially since my dad writes for it), my professor made a good point. Their headline is one-sided and borderline inflammatory, whereas the NYT headline covers both sides of the story. And that's our duty as journalists--to get the whole story to the public, not just one side of it. We need to be more careful about covering both sides and letting the readers make judgments on their own.