SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2010

Headline farming - growing a crop of misinformed Americans
The news industry knows something you don’t - most people do not read a whole news story, they form opinions and draw conclusions based only on the headlines.

For years, news consumer surveys have revealed the following readership habits: fifty-percent of news readers only read the headline and first couple of sentences of a news story; thirty-percent only read the headline and skim quickly over the body copy; and only eighteen to twenty-percent of readers typically read an entire news story.  Reader research results get even more interesting when recall tested on what they just read from a news story: the number one piece of information remembered is the headline. Now that you know the news industry‘s little secret, we’ll examine how some news sources plant the seeds of misinformation by engaging in headline farming.

Here’s how headline farming works: a partisan or advocacy group releases a press release containing bias and unscientific conclusions specifically designed to promote a political or financial agenda.  Next partisan or advocacy reporters harvest and publish the bias information as a headline in a news story, being careful to quote the source somewhere in the body of the news report.  Some reporters even go as far as questioning the reliability of the source somewhere in the body copy, all the while knowing, as you now know, eighty-percent of people the news story reaches will only remember the headline.  We can safely make the assumption that eighty-percent of our fellow citizens are making decisions, from what products to buy to what candidates and issues to support, based on faulty and even false information.

What can be done about the practice of headline farming?  Becoming aware of the practice of headline farming for a start, then helping empower average citizens to do their own fact-checking of headlines that seem too good to be true. A quick and easy way to fact-check can be as simple as doing a Google search on the source of a headline.  Partisan advocacy groups are easy to identify, which makes journalist’s role in the practice of headline farming all the more despicable.  Unfortunately, until news organizations are held legally accountable for headline farming, it’s a “Reader Beware” situation for the American public. What news consumers really need are warning labels or disclaimers on every news story published in America.

Warning labels required for every news story published in America may sound like a wild idea, but it would guarantee that news readers would get the whole story.  A warming label would include: the writer, editor, and reporter’s political affiliation.  Full disclosure of the news corporation’s campaign donations and interests related to the topic of the story, and full disclosure of any individual or organization quoted as a source in the story.  Warning labels are required on many products that if misused may become dangerous, now what could be more dangerous to a democracy than a misinformed public - a public fed a steady diet of headline farmed news.  

Carbon Zero the novel

The Great American Hoaxer

Charges are heating up, but temperatures aren't---Al Gore may replace Orson Welles as America's Greatest Hoaxer.

The words “We interrupt this broadcast,” followed by dramatic accounts of Martians invading America, were heard by 6 million radio listeners one infamous Halloween night in 1938.  Millions of panic-stricken Americans, first relieved then furious, found out they’d been hoaxed.  They had just heard the radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells, produced and narrated by Orson Welles. Accounts of the hoax’s impact and motivation vary widely, but all agree the broadcast launched Orson Welles into infamy as America’s Greatest Hoaxer - a title that is now in jeopardy from a much bigger hoaxer: Al Gore, the front-man for the global warming hoax.

Orson Welles’s hoax lasted 60 minutes, and if “Climate-Gate“ charges are true, Al Gore’s hoax will have lasted 17 years and panicked billions more Americans and people from every nation in the world.  The similarities between these hoaxes are many; some coincidental, and some frightening. Thankfully, for the purposes of this article, all are entertaining. Let’s look at just a couple. 

We know Orson Welles‘s motivation for the War of the Worlds hoax was fame. If you have seen Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, especially the section devoted to Gore’s thwarted presidential hopes, you can deduce both men and were motivated by the pursuit of fame; yet, in an ironic twist, both may only be remembered in infamy. 

Next and more importantly, the Martian and Climate hoax front-men have publicly supported socialist policies. Conspiracy theorists believe Orson Welles’s broadcast was much more than a publicity stunt. They believe it was a dry run of an opening salvo for a plan to takeover America, spearheaded by the American communist Party, and sponsored by Joseph Stalin himself. 

Many Americans are unaware of how strong the Communists movement was in 1938 America; their power had reached its apex and was only stalled by the start of World War II that very same year: 1938. Al Gore was born 10 years after Welles’s hoax, and has a vast public record of support for socialist beliefs. Many of the solutions proposed for global warming are suspiciously in line with communist doctrine.  Could Al Gore’s climate hoax be the second attempt at a communist takeover of America?

Many of the conditions that existed in 1938 America exist today: a resurgence of socialism, a deep recession, a fear of foreign entanglements.  A famous person once said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” After missing their chance in 1938, the World’s communists will not let another opportunity slip away.

Years from now, our kids will learn about the global warming hoax and America’s Greatest Hoaxer: Al Gore, much the same way Baby Boomers learned about Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds, Martian invasion hoax--as a entertaining story and lesson on the responsibility free people have to stay educated and informed to avoid falling for the next great American hoax.

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Must read look at America in the year 2076, after 60 years of failed gobal warming solutions