Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Headline Shapes The Opinion Regardless Of The Content

It's interesting to see what passes for "news" these days. It's also interesting to see who does and does not understand the difference between news shows and articles and opinion shows and articles. But whether you're talking news or opinion, the headline is what shapes people's attitudes toward the content.

I saw a news report from the Huffington Post this morning about a man in Marana, Arizona, a pleasant community on the Northwest side of Tucson. The headline read "Police Car Slams Into Suspect On The Street" and the byline underneath it said "Dramatic footage released Tuesday shows an Arizona police officer run into a man walking down the street in broad daylight."

Sounds horrible, right? In what has become typical with liberal news outlets these days, they make it sound like the big, bad police officer ran this poor, innocent man down with his car for no credible reason. Except there was a credible reason. Back in February, that man was walking down the street firing a high powered rifle into the air/neighborhood. Police tailed him from a safe distance for a while, ordering him to put the rifle down. He allegedly pointed it at at least one officer before the officer in question decided the man was a danger to everyone and took him down in the only way he could think of at the time.

The suspect survived, spent two days in the hospital and is now in jail on multiple felony charges including robbery, burglary, arson, home invasion, vehicle theft, and felony possession of a stolen weapon. If one didn't read past the headlines they wouldn't have a clue as to what the truth is.

Sadly, conservative media outlets do it as well, particularly internet sites. While I don't have a specific example right now (I did look for one), they are just as guilty of putting out a headline that misleads the reader into believing something other than the truth. I've seen many of them posted and re-posted on Facebook, where many Americans get their news. And the sad thing is - many people respond to the headline without actually reading the article. And that's the whole point.

It seems to be getting worse. Over the last couple of years I've had people make negative comments about one or more of my blog posts just from reading the title. Sometimes I use sarcasm in the title and make it sound positive for Obama and/or the left, then destroy them in the narrative. But some people don't get to the narrative. They just read the title and respond. When I ask if they actually read the content they say they didn't.

Thus the problem we have with uninformed voters. They will listen to what they hear on their TVs and radios, and read headlines on the internet and in  newspapers, without really digging deeper to learn the truth. Many decide who to vote for in that manner then wonder why things didn't work out the way they expected. A blatant example of it was the woman who, in 2008, said she was voting for Obama because he was going to pay her mortgage, put gas in her car and give her a free phone. Six years later she is lamenting about why she got none of the things she expected. Meet Peggy Joseph.

“During that time, we needed a change, but change for the better, not for the worse,” an enlightened Joseph said in a recent interview.

“He had a very big voice, just like the Wizard of Oz,” she said. “The wizard was this little teeny-teeny tiny man, and I think it’s the same thing with Obama, the man behind the curtain.”

“I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. That’s how I feel.”


“What I learned is never trust the Wizard,” Joseph says today. “It’s within ourselves to have the determination, the courage, and the brains, to bring us to our destiny.”

Sadly for Ms. Joseph, she believed the hype and voted accordingly. (I can't help but wonder if she voted for him a second time...?) Like many other Americans, she didn't do any homework before voting and didn't demand proper vetting of Obama before he was elected. And now, much to the detriment of our country, many of those same voters will cast their votes for Hillary Clinton, just because she's Hillary Clinton. They won't care about her past or her record. They won't research who she really is. The main stream media has been pushing Hillary for a couple of years now. That's all those voters need to hear. 

They also believe the liberal lies that Republicans and conservatives hate minorities and women and want old people to die rather than get medical care. They believe it because that's what they hear on their favorite liberal TV channel. They believe it because liberal politicians and pundits spew that rhetoric on a regular basis when it comes time for another election. They believe it because they refuse to make the time and effort to do a little research and become informed. And we wonder how our nation has fallen so far....


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