It is a shallow and transparent technique in the press, one used more often because it is effective. Deceptive headlines are commonplace, first instituted by lesser news outlets to generate cheap traffic. But over the years it has become a more mainstream tactic, and it is less about drawing eyes than driving a narrative. The title is not for clickbait as much as for rapid dispersal, and the body of the article is crafted to feed that instant gratification.
This is journalism in the digital era. A breaking story, or even a new angle on an existing topic is frequently delivered with a shock-and-awe mentality; a method to get the story they want out there, even when they do not have the story. The headline is the insistence, and the bulk of the story is the insinuation.
For proof that this is an effective gambit oftentimes the feature will offer up disqualifying details, the headline and core of the article or column undone by the central facts. Even as it appears the fraud is obvious there is no accountability, so the risk to a reputation is minimal. This is how we know it works. The outlet is unbothered, as getting the story they want out there is the priority, and the hit they endure later is of little concern.
These are the items most likely to be spread blithely across social media. Many think this feeds lazy readers with gulp-able facts, but with more frequency we see that it is other journalists and news outlets who disseminate the fraud. One outlet offers the headline, dozens of others then push it out, with the disclaimer "This from Politico says…," and the narrative then is installed.
The most recent example was at The Washington Post, where they hoped to regenerate the Russian collusion myth. Philip Bump offered a column with a bold claim: "The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence." Most journalists are wise enough to just back away from this subject entirely, but not Bump. He saw a detail in a recent Treasury Department report that showed Paul Manafort’s Ukraine contact gave the polling information fed to him to the Russians. As Bump states, this detail allows us to, "finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence."
Except it does not. This new variable changes nothing except a small clarification on a previously known event, and one that was already addressed. But then deep in his piece Bump gives us this neutering passage.
"It’s important to note that there is 1) no evidence at this point that Trump knew about the sharing of that information or 2) that Russia did much with the information it obtained. There were targeted ads from Russian actors during the campaign, but there remains no good evidence that those ads were targeted with insider information (much less well-targeted in general) nor that they had much of an effect."
This was offered up after roughly 15 paragraphs. So how this "finally" connects Trump to the Russian election efforts is never explained given he did not know, the Russians did not use the intel, and their tampering in general did not seem to work. But otherwise this is a bombshell report.
CBS News, which already recently displayed some of these tactics in its laughably bad Ron DeSantis hit piece on "60 Minutes," did some similar work on the pandemic. With all the drama focused currently on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being paused over side effects concerns, CBS came out to declare other vaccines are also something to worry about. Study Shows Similar Incident Of Rare Blood Clots With Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID Vaccines. Considering the tens of millions already vaccinated this is indeed a problem. Or, it is not a problem, according to the same report from the network.
"A study by researchers at Oxford University in England suggests the risks of experiencing dangerous, rare blood clots in the brain are far higher in those who catch the coronavirus than in those who get either the AstraZeneca vaccine, or the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna in the U.S."
CBS later went back and altered the headline so it now reads a much calmer explanation of that detail.
CNN also got in on the Covid hype game, politicizing the pandemic in a way journalists used to lecture against. This was the worrisome headline that the network delivered. "So far, 5,800 fully vaccinated people have caught Covid anyway in US, CDC says." It did not take long for the nuance to be brought to their attention that this was an almost microscopic figure when weighed against the 77 million or so people who have been vaccinated. The news leader later sent out versions of the same story with a more well-rounded headline.
Over at Yahoo News they wanted to join in on the Ron DeSantis dogpile, (proving they too were like the other neutered Yorkies attempting to bring the man down.) Alexander Nazaryan claims "Florida Covid Numbers Face New Scrutiny," a boast that the state was undercounting Covid deaths by the thousands. What was revealed, after nearly 1,000 words, was that this was a statistical study not focused solely on Florida. It was also not bad news.
Nationwide they looked at figures showing the spike in death rates for 2020 and came up with a measurement of "excess deaths" indirectly attributable to Covid. The national average for this was 21 percent. Florida, meanwhile, came in significantly lower, at 15.5 percent. So in a lengthy hit-piece on DeSantis, Nazaryan manages to provide evidence of just how well he has been performing. But this headline was shared by journalists, doctors, and of course, those looking to run against DeSantis.
And these practices just continued. At NPR they gave a lengthy and disturbingly glowing review of Hunter Biden’s book release. Initially the outlet reported "The laptop story was discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations." Understand this was the same outlet that boldly declared it would not waste its listeners' time by covering Hunter’s scandal, with all of the claims of Russian disinformation - and zero proof of this effort. Later, on this review they issued a correction. "A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect."
In fact, they made statements to the opposite effect. The Director Of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, made the definitive statement the laptop was not part of Russian disinformation - last October.
At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, they too issued a notable retraction, this concerning the Georgia election law. There has been no shortage of false hysterical claims about this law (many by President Biden) but for the newspaper from the state capital to be unaware is a little tough to believe. In a celebrity piece on Tyler Perry they tucked their correction in at the bottom, changing its position on polling office times and early voting extensions.
The reason these supposed missteps and errors are allowed to take place is because they can. By the time the alterations and corrections get issued the damage is done, the narrative is in effect. The sad part is as they ship these lies around the world it is up to the news readers ourselves to get the pants on the truth.