It’s all in your headline

It’s all in your headline February 8, 2011

Note this story about the Live Action sting video that allegedly caught an employee of Planned Parenthood trying to help the ‘pimp’ keep his robust underage sex trafficking business afloat.  The headline reads Anti-Abortion Group Targets NYC Clinic in Video.  The focus is on ‘Anti-Abortion Group’, and the ‘Clinic’ is not named, or even hinted at.  Sure, anyone with a brain could figure that the clinic is an abortion provider.  But only because the mind must recall the ‘Anti-Abortion’ part of the headline. After all, this is only the first, second, third case in which this has been allegedly discovered at an abortion clinic, so we should keep the focus on the real story.

Of course the headline could have read Employee of Planned Parenthood allegedly aids Sex Trafficker.  It would be just as accurate.  And it would give some indication of a major, major point of the story.  Instead this, like the CNN ticker and other MSM descriptions, have focused on ‘Anti-Abortion’, ‘Sting’, and ‘Undercover’, rather than ‘Planned Parenthoold’, ‘Illegal’, or ‘Sex Trafficking’.  It’s all in the headlines.  Most journalists and news outlets are aware that folks today read the Headlines, and that’s about it.  Therefore the headline focus is on yet another sting by some anti-abortion group (the groups that were highlighted when Dr. Tiller was killed).  It isn’t on the unspeakably horrible crime that may have been committed.  We save that emphasis when its a conservative, traditional Christian, or Republican accused of wrongdoing.


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