2008-06-10

pyat: (Default)
2008-06-10 08:37 am

Misleading Headlines

You may have been reading about the large temporary lakes created by the recent Chinese earthquake. These are/were highly unstable bodies of water, and there was much concern that they would break through the dams of wreckage and catastrophically flood heavily populated areas.

So, I was a little concerned by this CNN headline:

QUAKE LAKE WATER SURGES THROUGH CITIES

Except when you read the story, you find out that the draining operation was a success, and most of the danger is past. The "surge" refers to control drainage of the lake that passed through an outflow channel.

I don't know. I see this as a kind of bait and switch. It's not simply a dramatic headline - it's an actively misleading headline.