Of ridiculous headlines

I have a bone to pick with some of the newspapers here. Many of the headlines on the front page have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story inside. I know it’s all part of the tabloid culture, but if the media are trying to inform people, the first step is not to mislead them.

One of my personal favourites is a piece from The Awareness Times newspaper a couple of days back. The front page screamed ‘Charles Taylor Crowned German Ambassador’ Inside of course, the story was something completely different. It was about Karl Prinz, the former German Ambassador to Sierra Leone who had apparently been expelled from the country for mingling with the likes of Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord who had a big role to play in fueling Sierra Leone’s civil war. The headline in the online version of the story is more redeeming, ‘Charles Taylor Had Crowned German Ambassador’. An excerpt from the story:

In 1994, at the height of Sierra Leone’s Brutal War which was funded and sponsored by the then-greatest enemy of Sierra Leone, Rebel Leader Charles Taylor; The German Ambassador, Karl Prinz, without informing his Host Country Sierra Leone, traveled to Liberia where he Socialised with Charles Taylor inside Taylor's Rebel Headquarters Base & Accepted Gift(s) from the Warlord

The fact that the article itself contained factual inaccuracies is a different story altogether. The story prompted a letter from Sama Banya, who is the Chairman of the SLPP (Sierra Leone People's Party), disputing the claim that the German Ambassador had snuck into the country. An excerpt from his letter:

In the first place Gbanga was and is not in a Liberia forest, but a city in the heart of the country which Charles Taylor had made his headquarter. In the second place Ambassador Karl Prinz did not sneak into Liberia nor could his action be described as cavorting with Charles Taylor. Thirdly and most importantly, the German government did not have an Ambassador in Monrovia and the German Ambassador to Sierra Leone had oversight of the Embassy there and of the situation in the country. I don’t believe this was a secret at the time.

I’m not sure where this will lead but trouble started with a bad headline and a worse story.

Another pet peeve of mine was a headline a few weeks ago that said ‘School teachers strangled’. Of course inside it was revealed that no one was harmed but that the staff of a certain primary school was having funding problems. It irks me that editors allow such headlines to pass, presumably because they sell more copies.

While we’re on the topic of headlines, let me mention one that I made. My newspaper The Exclusive saw it fit to publish a front page story about me celebrating the fact that I would be with them for seven months (Pity it’s not online) It said:

The Exclusive gets Indian Trainer