10 ms·
Tired of all these headlines with the use of emotionally laden words like "soar", "crash", "plummet", "skyrocket", "plunge", "collapse", etc. Especially the las
by drstewart 7y ago
Tired of all these headlines with the use of emotionally laden words like "soar", "crash", "plummet", "skyrocket", "plunge", "collapse", etc. Especially the last few weeks journalists are in overdrive with their thesaurus usage.
Why don't you just present the facts and let the reader decide what literary narrative to assign to the story?
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoHighly charged headlines drive clicks, thereby increasing ad revenue.
- docdeek 7y agoWhat adjective would you use to describe a rise in the unemployment rate from around 5% to above 11% in three months? I understand and agree with the idea that emotionally laden words don’t always add much to the story, but in this case I think ‘soar’ is probably close to the mark. Australia’s unemployment rate peaked at 11.2% in 1992, and has only gone above 7% for a couple of months in the last 20 years. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/unemployment-rate https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/unemployment...
- netsharc 7y agoConsidering the graphs, "skyrocket" doesn't seem inappropriate... https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2020/mar/24/when-it-comes-to-unemployment-in-australia-definitions-have-been-broken https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2020/mar/24...
- acchow 7y agoI think most readers wouldn't know how to interpret 11.1% unemployment. Is that good or bad? How good or bad? It's like telling the average person that your geiger counter reads 3.6 roentgens. That doesn't mean anything to them.
- StrangeDoctor 7y agoAlso state if that’s above/below target/limit/guideline/"we have no idea but it sounds nice"?
- chii 7y agoif you present the current unemployment rate in the article to give the reader some context, they will be able to conclude whether it's good or bad themselves. Better yet, compare it to olden times like the great depression, and give the reader more context.
- dehrmann 7y agoFor a country that hasn't had a recession in 25 years, it's really bad.
- akubera 7y agoI always had a similar distaste for headlines with words like "blast" and "slam", but learned recently[0] that these are standard abbreviations for headline writers to save space. Your words are not on that list from Wikipedia, but "soar" & "crash" might be used in such a way to shorten "{in,de}crease". (But certainly not "skyrocket"!) Of course, isn't that convenient that they carry greater emotional weight... [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290486
- xvedejas 7y agoAre "rise" and "fall" not perfectly acceptable neutral alternatives?
- avalys 7y agoDon't forget "whopping."
- jsemrau 7y agoGerman news are mostly in comparison much more factual and neutral compared to this. I prefer the German news because of this.
- mistermann 7y agoI believe that the growing political polarization and anger we are seeing is in no small part due to the government and media "implanting" invalid perceptions of reality into people's minds (skillful use of language being only one of the many techniques used), and different groups each receive a different projection. Scott Adams uses the analogy of different groups seeing a completely different movie on the screen.