"Big statements and flashy findings." These statements and findings I am talking about are the ones that we read about every day from major media outlets. According to Science News magazine, the ideal process that an article will go through starts with interviewing sources and talking to experts, and then, as the story is finished, it will go through at least one editor before it is finally published.
Notice I said ideal. Media outlets (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) compete for coverage. Let's say the democratic presidential debate happened two hours ago. Hundreds of newspapers are now rushing to get articles published about the drama from the debate or the issues that were or were not addressed. As a result of little time and a high amount of pressure to get the 'best article,' exaggeration in headlines, statistics, and even quotes, could go by unchanged and even unnoticed.
As a double major in psychology and criminal justice, I have learned two things:
1. We love to exaggerate, even if we know it's far from the truth.
We are more likely to grab a newspaper with a front page headline that reads: "The Big Apple Is On Fire!" rather than a headline that says: "New York City Sets A Third Record In Tourism Numbers."
2. Fallacies (eight of them, to be exact) occur in all types of media coverage, even from trained and degreed journalists.
For example, the Big Gang fallacy states that people assume all delinquent youth in a city are involved in some type of gang, and that those gangs cause all of the cities' violence. Hence why you may read a lot of articles about that in cities such as Chicago and Detroit.
Just to illustrate what I'm trying to say with this article, let me show an example.
After reading the page I got this image from, you can see why it is so controversial. The headline states that Harvard found a cure for Type 1 diabetes. The Telegraph is a well-respected media outlet, and I am not saying anything about their research or writers, but this headline was definitely a bust. Misusing the word cure raises false hope, because a cure means that the disease will be taken care of and not come back, ever.
The Telegraph, its writers, and the Harvard researchers had good intentions. This is not taking away from their studies or findings, either. But it is obvious that they knew this type of headline would catch a reader's attention, even it is a false statement.
A term for this type of journalism can be labeled as yellow journalism: the use of sensationalism and exaggeration to attract readers. I found a site that lists sometimes funny and ironic examples of yellow journalism. Some of those headlines are:
Baby Snatched by Eagle (the video shown with this attention-grabbing headline was fake)
Titanic Survivors Found Onboard
Hubby's Bad Breath Kills His Wife
Nazi UFOs to Attack U.S.
Those are only a few, but I think you get my point. Before jumping on the bandwagon of an issue that maybe struck you as interesting as you passed by a newspaper with an exciting headline, make sure you compare the article with its headline. The articles themselves usually show their own title to be exaggerated, because the writer's intent was to get you to read the article in the first place.
One issue/topic may circulate and goes through maybe hundreds of reporters' hands in just one day, and by the time it is published by that one-hundredth person, facts could have been compromised and statements that are not true are now accepted as fact and repeated as such.
