[This is one of those posts in which it’s important to read to the kicker–PR.]
An anonymous tipster alerted me to an example of bad headlines that is so perfect that I don’t think I could have made up a better example.
The subject is a BMJ study on breastfeeding. The study raised questions about a World Health Organization recommendation that infants be exclusively breastfed for six months. The title of the study: “Six months of exclusive breast feeding: how good is the evidence?”
That’s reasonably neutral; one might expect to read that the evidence is good, or not so good. And the study’s conclusion is also tempered. Rather than concluding that breastfeeding is good or bad, it says, simply, that “complementary foods may be introduced safely between four and six months.” It doesn’t say that they must be. It doesn’t say that exclusive breastfeeding until six months is dangerous; it questions that recommendation, and says that introducing other foods is safe.
But is that the impression you would get from these headlines?
BBC News: Weaning before six months ‘may help breastfed babies.’
The Los Angeles Times Booster Shots blog: Breast may not be best for the first six months of life, some experts say.
msnbc.com: Study: Babies may need more than breast milk.
AOLNews: Breast-Feeding Exclusively Not the Best for Babies After All?
CBS News Healthwatch: Breast-Feeding Advice Wrong? What Should Moms Do?
Nature news: Is breast not best for babies?
You get the idea. These headlines all suggest that the current recommendations are wrong, that mothers now face a terrible dilemma, that if you follow the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (“We recommend exclusively breastfeeding for a minimum of four months but preferably for six months…”), you might be doing your baby harm.
Some of these stories are much better than their headlines, but how many readers will simply see the headlines, or tweet or Facebook the links based on the headlines, inadvertently spreading misinformation?
Reporters working for old media always had a convenient excuse for bad headlines on their stories–“I don’t write the headlines!” (Copy editors, highly focused souls who wrote the headelines and rarely took their eyes off of their screens, had no opportunity to reply, making this reporters’ excuse even better.)
Now, however, that has changed. Many reporters do write their own headlines. But whatever the source of these headlines, they have created a false impression about the study.
And, the kicker: According to the study’s disclosure, three of its four authors “have performed consultancy work and/or received research funding from companies manufacturing infant formulas and baby foods within the past 3 years.”
Maybe that should have been in the headlines.
– Paul Raeburn
Leave a Reply