Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Headlinewatch

'Well, that's all right then' headline of the day: "No NZers among 216 passengers on missing jet"

Charmingly misleading headline of the day: "Racial attacks could bring students to NZ"

'No shit' headline of the day: "Crown says evidence points to David Bain"

Photo caption of the day: On the funeral of zookeeper Dalu Mncube at Zion 'Wildlife Gardens' - "LOST FRIEND: A lion stands to attention near the waiting hearse."

Translated into rational-speak: "A lion, one of the wild predatory animals that, in their capacity as wild, predatory animals, mauled Mr Mncube to death, stands behind a fence wondering what is going on." Seriously, Beck Vass (or whoever wrote the caption), this is exactly the kind of ridiculous anthropomorphisation of wild animals that got Dalu Mncube - and a tiger that was just 'doing its job' - killed. Good job.

3 comments:

  1. The first headline reminds me (I am afraid) of a Monty Python sketch. "Here is the news for gerbils. The Minister of Gerbils said today 'no gerbils were among the 216 missing passengers' on the downed jet from Brazil." Substitute gerbils for New Zealanders. A lot of NZ coverage of overseas disasters suffers from the 'news for gerbils' approach.
    Mr February

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  2. I just saw that Garth George has finally weighed in on the georgie pie situaion. I am licking my chops, not at the thought of a horribly hard crusted and overly gravilicious georgie pie, but at Jimmy's response. It's like the night before kwanzaa...

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  3. The first headline reminds me of the first rule of Fleet Street's story placement. The sentence that relegated many a fine, newsworthy story to a brief on page 15 is "No Britons were among the injured."

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