Buzzfeed on "If Newspaper Headlines Were ... - Healthy Evidence

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Buzzfeed on "If Newspaper Headlines Were Scientifically Accurate"

Josephine_Jones profile image
9 Replies

I think it's good to see these points being made here, to an audience who weren't particularly after a dry story about how science and health news is reported.

buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/if-...

It occurs to me that it would probably be possible to do fresh versions of this post on a weekly, even daily basis.

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Josephine_Jones profile image
Josephine_Jones
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9 Replies
JossS profile image
JossS

I like what has been done here - with a slight rider ...

Because these headlines are images and not text, they are losing search engine results. Fussy I know, but that is how the web works.

Paul1308 profile image
Paul1308 in reply toJossS

First post on here. It's rather an agreeable one.

I agree. Being able to click through to the original story would be nice. It's not clear whether the headlines are verbatim or not.

Otherwise, nice.

Josephine_Jones profile image
Josephine_Jones in reply toPaul1308

I wonder if they made a conscious decision not to link to the articles and if so, what the reasoning was.

You could find the article yourself and check the headlines, bearing in mind that sometimes they are changed and sometimes are different online than on paper. This website allows you to check for edits to websites, by archiving pages and allowing you to search for past versions of the URL: archive.org/web/

Paul1308 profile image
Paul1308 in reply toJosephine_Jones

Thanks very much for the link. I'd heard about the website but never visited.

Gez_Blair profile image
Gez_Blair

Our team at Bazian do that to all our headlines - we have to change them back to something a bit more readable :-)

Josephine_Jones profile image
Josephine_Jones

I think you do a fantastic job!

Chris_Peters profile image
Chris_PetersSense About Science

Not so long ago the Telegraph managed to sneak in a scientifically accurate headline. I suppose it's the only paper with pages big enough!

twitter.com/senseaboutsci/s...

in reply toChris_Peters

All papers have big enough pages - some papers devote their entire front page to health-scare headlines over 4-5 decks! Quark/InDesign/Whatever makes this very easy.

In fact, most Mail headlines in print turn into essays for the online version - a clever trick of SEO (search engine optimization) to attract more visitors and thereby more advertising revenue.

Gez_Blair profile image
Gez_Blair

Though it is important to state that most journalists don't to get to write their own headlines - that is normally down to the sub-editors - who are usually more than happy to sacrifice accuracy in the interests of impact

Still, that's no excuse for the Mail today failing to realise that heart attacks are not the same as heart failure

dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...

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