The Misleading Sensational Headlines Have Got to Stop
Stopping them is easier said than done: Education is our only hope
My 16-year-old son came down unusually excited this morning. “Did you know that some lab crossed a human embryo with a pig’s and now there’s a half-pig, half-human creature?”
“Is that for real? Do you have a picture of it?” I asked, incredulously.
“Yeah.” I could see him enthusiastically retrieving the picture of this creature on his phone. “See!”
I studied it. “Are you sure it’s not photoshopped?”
“Yeah, it’s right there in the article.”
I opened the article in disbelief. I supposed it was possible that with the rest of our country hyper-focused on the pandemic, bioethics went by the wayside. But I didn’t think it was likely.
I’m not sure how far my son read into the article, but he was sadly duped. And I was relieved to find that a bioethicist’s worst nightmare had been averted.
If he had read past the headline, he would have learned in the first sentence that the sensational photo of the half-human, half-pig was the work of a sculpture depicting such a creature. And, while it was true that scientists at the Salk Institute in California did develop a part-human part-pig embryo, it was only permitted to live a few days.
The whole significance of the article centered around the concerns of ethicists in developing human hybrids. Hopefully, my son hadn’t already reposted the article on his social media feed under the pretense we’re living in a world with human-pig crossbreeds.
But this wasn’t the first sensational online article I had exposed as misleading this week. And I’m not just talking about flagrant conspiracy theories. I’m talking about misconstrued facts with sensationalized photos and/or headlines that serve to immediately flip on the pathos switch and compel you to click on the article.
One of my friends posted this headline on social media two days ago: 31 Percent of Children in Florida Have Tested Positive for Coronavirus. I had recently seen a similar statistic, but this headline was missing some keywords.
It should have read 31 Percent of Children Tested for Coronavirus in Florida Were Positive. So, when I opened the article to check if this was another sensational headline, I was disappointed because it never clarified the statistic and misled the reader to believe that the coronavirus cases were astronomically high.
I can’t say whether the author of the article with the faulty title was trying to sensationalize it by publishing completely false information or if the writer sincerely didn’t understand the difference in the wording (and so, therefore, didn’t understand much math either). Either way, that’s some bad journalism.
I’m the type of person who has never been shy to call out inaccuracies when I see it:
Fortunately, all the other news sources on this story got this statistic right, in the headline, as well as in the article. The 31% of children tested for coronavirus in Florida tested positive, accounting for nearly 17,000 Floridian children as of July 17. No trifling amount, but certainly not near the over a million purported in the inaccurate news source I cited above.
We live in a time when skepticism is ripe. Real threats are questioned while sensational conspiracy theories easily go viral.
There are a lot of headlines that stop us dead in our tracks, even those with accurate information. Half the time I feel like today’s surreal news could only be fabricated by The Onion, a publication devoted to humor and satire. I’m sure I’m not alone in stating that much of our current news is equal parts upsetting and maddeningly sensational! It’s easily clickbait worthy. The actual clickbait articles have a lot of competition.
We live in a technological world where children regard newspapers as “vintage” (if they even know what they are). Instead, the predominant ways that many people — adults and teens alike — consume news are through sensational headlines often from sketchy online sources and social media sites. It’s a struggle to maintain a balance of healthy scrutiny.
Growing up, tabloids in supermarkets were the predominant source of sensationalist headlines. But the simplicity of curbside newspapers (and the joy of Sunday morning comics) offered us straightforward articles neatly organized in different subcategories. Now in a waning 20th-century culture, navigating news sources today requires extra caution. In addition to the internet abounding with news sources tainted by politics and individual self-interests, digesting news today requires basic knowledge and many skills, including but not limited to:
- open-mindedness
- common sense
- scrutiny
- application of background knowledge
- ability to analyze
- fact-checking — e.g., Snopes, Politifact, FactCheck
- familiarity with your sources
With anyone able to write anything on the internet, it can be overwhelming and time-consuming to handpick your chosen news sources. It’s natural to gravitate towards articles that confirm our own implicit bias and even more natural to be enticed by the most sensational news stories.
This problem can’t easily be solved. Besides, it would take people to read through articles like these to help train them to use some of these skills, a task which isn’t at all sensational.
There’s an unexpected irony living in a time and place where accurate information is endangered because of too many choices compared to the censured choices by an authoritarian government. It’s understandable that journalists sensationalize their headlines. After all, killer headlines are the best marketing strategy to captivate an audience and unfortunately, people often do not read beyond the headlines. While journalists should and often do strive to report accurate information, the sensationalism is coming from many other sources, some of them not legitimate news sources at all.
So what can we do to curb the dangerous surplus of sensational misinformation?
The answer can’t be censorship. The first amendment protects our right to express any opinion, conspiracy theory, or belief we may have, with few exceptions. And, other than defamation lawsuits, we have few tricks up our sleeve to curb illegitimate news sources or sensational headlines. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes it possible for anyone to exercise their first amendment rights on the web because it frees the owners of the platforms from any liability for the actions of their users. Anyone can post the darkest conspiracy theory or most ridiculous romantic fantasies online, though website owners maintain the right to moderate sites without legal liability and to create their own rules. Facebook and Twitter, for example, have banned hate speech. Without Section 230, we would greatly inhibit the web at the hands of big reproving publishers.
But hopefully, the tides have turned this year. Not from the users but from the platforms themselves. Twitter has decided to take things into their own hands. In May 2020 they published an article detailing new warning labels for Tweets that could have a propensity for harm. These labels were designed “to limit the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content” relevant to COVID-19 because it conflicted “with guidance from public health experts.”
This is certainly a step in the right direction. Ironically, this decision was the first in a chain of events that spiraled into a rare example of congressional bipartisan consensus: Section 230 is a problem. (But we shouldn’t be surprised that members from both parties have vastly different reasons for re-examining the once-obscure section and it’s equally unsurprising that the impetus for both was motivated through their fears of each other).
But revoking Section 230 could result in many lawsuits that could ultimately lead to some of the biggest online platforms’ demise. Big internet giants like YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and, oh no, even Medium could be washed up into the ethers. (Ethernet pun not intended).
Up until now, the internet has served its users with gold standard customer service hospitality. Serve the customer and — no matter what — the customer is always right. Even the most mouthy insolent individuals who spout scathing vitriol right in your face are treated with respect. But we’ve all witnessed our share of insolent web users and abusers. And while I’d like to expel such people, I’m not sure this would be democratic. But is it best to leave these choices at the hands of technological giants?
Changing the internet as we know it is a tricky initiative. Recently, the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet introduced the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020, or the “EARN IT Act.” It is the latest attempt to pass a bill to moderate the internet while attempting to maintain its freedom. It is designed to protect children from sexual child abuse exploitation online. Even with this worthy goal, critics are wary that it will curb free speech, not do what is intended, and threaten end-to-end encryption, or communication privacy protections.
The President signed an executive order in May safeguarding “diverse viewpoints.” This both served as a direct response to Twitter’s new warning labels and a direct attack on the protections afforded to platform owners. This is an excerpt from the order after Trump felt personally targeted by Twitter:
“Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet. As recently as last week, Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets. Unsurprisingly, its officer in charge of so-called ‘Site Integrity’ has flaunted his political bias in his own tweets.”
Through these legislative quarrels, it is clear that we heavily value the right to express ourselves. Furthermore, we realize the conundrum that actions taken to protect others online can conflict with our first amendment rights. The question of who should moderate information and to what extent moderation is necessary on the web remains in limbo.
Ideally, I’d like to live in a world where people have mastered the necessary reading comprehension and web navigation skills to live in a functional reality.
And while we do not have an effective route for this goal to come to fruition, we can accomplish it for the future generation — by educating our children. As a parent, I know that making the right decisions for our children in regards to technology is difficult. This is especially true now during the pandemic, as we rely on it as the sole resource for education and safe social interactions. There’s little guidance, conflicting views, and very much a “different strokes for different folks” mentality.
As an educator, I feel education should step up to provide students with the tools necessary to critically assess content on the world wide web. We should be using technology in the classroom regularly to help students distinguish between credible resources and misinformation. While my county is fortunate to have technology teachers, these resources are not widespread. Furthermore, teachers have not had explicit training to guide students in applying the necessary knowledge and skills. Instead, school districts’ technological regulations lead teachers to urge students to use specific online resources that have been pre-approved.
And what about outside of the classroom? Students are given a mobile device at a bright young age with little guidance on how to navigate, investigate, analyze, and make sound judgments on what they encounter. Students have not mastered the skills and lack the experience and mental maturity necessary to critically and accurately analyze internet content. Due to these factors, they are more vulnerable to sensationalism and advertising than the general adult population. Our modern-day philosopher’s stone, the internet, essentially has the answers — accurate or not — to any question. Students are left to their own devices — literally — to stay afloat on a sinking less glamourous ship of accuracy, truth, and reality.
The moral conundrum parents face regarding misinformation on the web can have dangerous consequences on children. For instance, young people can, and in recent years increasingly have, become brainwashed into white supremacy or other terrorist groups by falling prey to their sensational propaganda. My parents warned me repeatedly on safe practices out in the real world. But, today, there’s very little collective wisdom to protect young minds from the inundation of misinformation. Schools have only grazed the subject. And parents need more guidance.
While the United States is a beacon for individual freedom, we must do more to assure that the next generation values knowledge and can distinguish fact from fiction. We need to prioritize a strong moral compass and foster a culture that values critical thinking skills. By doing this we will maintain an even richer powerhouse of accurate quality materials on the web.
