Reliable news...

Once upon a time getting the news was fairly easy. For us locals, that meant the Winston-Salem Journal, WSJS radio and Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley. If you needed more, the New York Times. And if you were interested in economics and finance, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. And around town, a bit of word of mouth or gossip, whichever you like to call it.

But cable television and the internet have produced a bewildering array of "news" sources, the vast majority of which are not reliable. The fierce competition for reader and viewership has led to headline and sound bite "journalism" that can range from pure sensationalism to outright deception.

So how do you determine whether a news source is reliable or not? One way is to look out for and avoid sensationalist headlines. Today I noticed such a headline on the once reliable Wall Street Journal website.

Dozens? Just how many is that? Once upon a time there were some hard and fast rules about the use of the word "dozens" in headlines. If the exact number was known, you used that. If not, there was some sort of threshold for "dozens". It wasn't two, nor three...it might be four under certain circumstances, but usually it meant more than that. Some recent examples of actual headlines making the proper use of dozens:

Typhoon Kills Dozens in Philippines  (over 80)

Dozens Dined In Style for Good Cause (around 200)

Dozens to don Santa suits for 'SantaCon' pub crawl (about 100)

Dozens of militants seen in Mali city of Timbuktu (over 90)

Twin Blasts Kill Dozens In Damascus  (over 50)

But in the case of today's Wall Street Journal headline, the exact number was known and reported in the story, 27, and even if the number had been "about 25", that would not meet the threshold for the use of the word "dozens".

So why did the Wall Street Journal use "dozens"? It wouldn't have 30 years ago, but since it has become a part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, it has followed the Murdoch credo of sensationalism, along with such other Murdoch outlets as the New York Post and Fox "News".

Can you trust news outlets that use sensationalist headlines? Sometimes. In this case, the Wall Street Journal got the story essentially right. But in the case of many articles from Murdoch media, the headline is just the intro to misleading and outright false "information". I'll have a great example of that from The Wall Street Journal soon.

Meanwhile, I will seek information from more reliable sources that don't feel the need to use sensationalism.