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While typing up this post, did the thought of people reading nothing but the headline (and ignoring the content of the article itself) cross your mind at all?

by xor1 10y ago

While typing up this post, did the thought of people reading nothing but the headline (and ignoring the content of the article itself) cross your mind at all? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?utm_term=.3a04826168a4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06... >Doesn't make it right, but it's hardly 'fake news'. >The article has been corrected to "Github coding study suggests gender bias" - while different, clearly it's the same underlying story. Clearly, except the majority of "readers" aren't even going to read the underlying story. The "fake news" here is the misleading title of the story, which is going to be the only information/narrative evaluated by most readers.

Latty 10y ago
Sure, something the site this was posted on is extremely guilty of as well (see the article I linked at the bottom of my post). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the BBC were right in this case, but the difference between the reality and the headline was not as far as many, it was corrected (very slowly), and the conclusion wasn't something they created, but drawn from the paper. None of that makes it right, but it's worth asking why is this the particular example of 'fake news' this site wants to point out? The clear answer is because they want to imply that the opposite is true, or that anyone suggesting good things about women must be wrong. Arguably, if what they are saying is right, it shouldn't matter what the source is, except this article is overblown for the matter at hand, doesn't address the wider issue of this happening with papers all of the damn time (with papers of all types), and has some obviously leading segments designed to imply stuff. This article is obviously a small part of their agenda to scare and infuriate male readers, by making it look like 'SJWs' are a bigger issue than they are.