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Editorials - 03/14/02Headlines not meant to tell whole story |
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We've all heard the old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover." Here in the
newsroom, we'd like to add another bit of advice: You can't learn all the information in a story by only reading its headline.
This truth of this hit home this week, thanks to the reaction of two local health professionals to a March 7 report on results of a recent tuberculosis screening of Cashiers area migrant farm workers. To summarize, last week's front-page story said that seven of 23 farm workers tested positive for the disease, which meant further testing was needed to determine if any had active cases. Health department officials were quoted, and the story stressed that the individuals were not contagious and posed no health risk to the community. Based on this article, we were accused of both racism and sensationalism. Why? Because of the story's headline: "Migrant farm workers test positive for TB." As we delved into the matter, it seemed neither caller was taking issue with the information contained in the story; instead, they were bothered by what they considered a misleading headline - one that could cause alarm among readers who stopped reading after the big words. Both health officials wrote letters to the editor taking us to task. Because their letters contained information not available at presstime last week - the news that subsequent testing had revealed no active case of tuberculosis - we chose to write a follow-up (see "Migrant farm workers found free of active TB," page 1A) to update our initial story. Headlines serve several purposes in a newspaper. First and foremost, they pique readers' curiosity. They are supposed to be attention-grabbers - big words that make the readers want to read all the little words that follow. In addition, they separate stories from each other and present a quick glimpse of article topics as readers glance through the pages. We have found that writing headlines is not an easy task. We don't like wimpy little headlines. We prefer them to be complete thoughts. We strive for action words and active voice. We even try to spell all the words correctly. And somehow we have to compose headlines to fit the available space. Which brings us back to the headline in question. In our opinion, it performs all those functions admirably. We've read it dozens of times, and we still feel it accurately foreshadows the information contained in the report. It doesn't tell the complete story, but that was never our intent. We are grateful to nurse Josie Nunley, who heads the farm worker health program, and Dr. Mark Heffington of Cashiers, who volunteers his time to the project, for their interest and concern. We appreciate the new information they alerted us to that allowed us to provide our readers with the results of the second round of TB testing. But headlines can't tell the whole story, anymore than a pretty cover can guarantee a great novel. Sometimes you just have to read all the words. |
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