The Misleading Headlines Continue

I've really just about had it with the Post. This morning they have an article headlined, "US Journalist Shown as Hostage," and sure enough the first third or so of the article is about the fact that footage of the reporter Jill Carroll has shown up on al Jazeera. (By the way, really, no news outlet has yet hired a lip reader to overcome the daunting fact that there was "no audio" to the video that aired?)

But after that comes the usual kitchen sink of items too short to justify, in the Post's judgment, stand-alone articles.

One, of course, is an update on political developments. But one of those developments is an assertion of interference from the Iranians, which means that buried is this astonishing development:

Adding to such fears was another incident reported Tuesday, in which the Iraqi government asserted that an Iranian ship had attacked Iraqi coast guard vessels in the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway near the Persian Gulf. The Iraqis had been chasing a merchant ship suspected of smuggling oil when the ship raised an Iranian flag and called for help from nearby Iranian navy ships, the governor of Basra province, Mohammed Waeli, said in an interview.

The Iranians fired at the two Iraqi patrol boats, then boarded them, arresting eight Iraqi sailors and injuring one, Waeli said.

That's just a bit far afield from the story of the kidnapped reporter, but it's fairly important. It really is about time the Post began doing something in either the headline or the sub-head to make clear that these pieces involve far more than just the story included in the headline.

Comments

[DCXena]

Finally the light begins to shine through...! I've been complaining about the WaPo for a couple of years now. I think you've defended them as the default position...because SURELY there had to be a reasonable "big-city" paper heir to the NYT. But that breed has gone the way of doctor's house calls and full-service filling stations...