Fake News Alert: Headlines Paint False Picture Of Ukraine Aid Freeze
Leftist media print misleading headlines apparently to incriminate the president over Ukraine aid.
Following the court-ordered release of heavily redacted emails concerning the temporary hold of U.S. financial aid to Ukraine, press bias against President Trump was on full display. The media breathlessly reported that the aid was frozen immediately after Trump’s now-famous July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president. That all sounds terribly incriminating – if only it were true.
Misleading headlines appear to have been deliberately written to imply a sequence of events that might incriminate the president but, in fact, the articles beneath those headlines concede that a hold was placed on the aid well before the Trump-Zelensky phone call. In each case, that one, vital fact is buried several paragraphs into the respective reports.
Playing Head Games With Headlines
In the age of click-bait, journalists and editors know very well that people who get their news via constantly-shifting social media newsfeeds often do not even read complete articles; they glance at a headline and apply confirmation bias to it. If the headline echoes a political or social position they support, these attention-challenged readers will like, share, repost, upvote and so on. If they don’t like what the headline says, they will give it a thumbs down and perhaps attach to it a snarky or hostile comment.
This is all well and good. Consumers of media products may do as they wish, after all, but the problem is often that the headline itself is the only thing many are taking away from the article. No matter what information the article contains, it is that one statement in bigger, bolder font that influences the thinking of so many.
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