Jun 22 2008
Stupid Headlines, Horrific Flooding and Death
Sometimes the idiocy of my local newspaper amazes me to no end. I think they must have monkeys as copy editors or at least as the people who write headlines.
Today, the Sunday paper had a banner headline that read, “Flooding not horrific, but one dead locally”. Ummm, okay, I know what they meant, really I do, but I am assuming that the family of the young woman who is presumed to have drowned in the flood waters of the Big Muddy River finds the flooding horrific indeed.
Worse yet for her family is that subhead which reads, “Woman Drives into Big Muddy Floodwaters.” Now, I read the story and I know that what the headline says in not exactly what police report probably happened. According to the police report, the young woman, 28, lost control of her vehicle on a curve and the vehicle flipped as it left the roadway and ended top down, submerged in the flood-swollen river. That’s a bit different than “Woman drives into floodwaters.” Driving into floodwaters implies that the woman saw the floodwaters and deliberate drove, as in steered, guided and caused to happen, her vehicle into the river.
I am, for her family, horrified at this headline. I am also horrified for the profession of journalism. This stupid and innaccurate headline implies that the woman is dead as a result of her own intended action rather than revealing that she was trapped in the vehicle and rescuers were unable to get her out for more than 15 minutes. She died before she could be transported to a St. Louis trauma center.
Her family is having to deal with this horrible incident and the local newspaper implies that the victim is somehow to blame.
In all honesty, I suspect the copy editor who wrote the headline is not really to blame. I blame the newspaper. The story was written minutes before the paper’s midnight deadline and had to be added at the last minute to the front page. Worse yet, this particular newspaper is well known for understaffing its copy desk and requiring young and under paid and inexperienced editors to work 50 or 60 hour weeks.
And, I blame journalism instructors. At many universities, future journalists have one or maybe two writing classes in meeting their course requirements. They are never taught to examine the meaning of a word–specific meaning, not just connotation–before putting it into a headline.
The editor who wrote that the flooding was not horrific, certainly meant that the flooding did not reach the devastating levels of the 1993 Great Flood, but that does not mean it is not horrible to those who suffer through it. Even if only one house is flooded, one business destroyed, or one life lost, the flooding is horrific to the people it affects. The phrasing makes the editor who wrote it appear callous and naive.
Complicating the offensive nature of the front page headline was a similarly poor headline in the inside section of the paper, “Man dead after being run over”. At least in this case, the headline is accurate. The man was lying in the road and run over with a vehicle.
However, accuracy does not excuse crassness or insensitivity. Again, this man had a family. I’m sure the abrupt and heartless nature of the headline does not ease their grief.
Perhaps the Southern Illinoisan should consider some basic compassion training for their headline writers as well as some basic grammar classes. Clearly, they could use both.
