Volume 5 number 3, April 2003 "Coen lambastes News-Miner and Ted Stevens in 753 words" and other ridiculous headlines It is a widely understood anomaly of print journalism that reporters do not write the headlines which appear over their articles. That job falls to another in the newsroom’s line of editors and copy desks. Each successive pair of hands that leaves their mark on the story represents another proverbial cook hovering over the stewpot, and while the soup is not always spoilt, it may leave a funny taste in the mouth. Thus does the reader of the morning newspaper find headlines that do not accurately reflect the tone and content of the articles. Take the News-Miner’s March 5 headline, "NAS releases ANWR report after two and a half years." The article, by Washington correspondent Sam Bishop, covers a National Academy of Sciences report on the cumulative impacts of North Slope oil development. First off, headlines are not alphabet soup (everybody knows what "ANWR" means, but "NAS" is unforgivable), but the headline has a couple other major problems. The document is not an ANWR report, which any copy editor who actually read Bishop’s article would know. The report focuses on the many impacts of oil development on the entire North Slope. Also, the inclusion of the phrase "after two and a half years" is ludicrous. Is the timeline of the report really its most important aspect? By this standard, one can imagine a News-Miner headline following the Super Bowl: "Football game ends after 4 quarters of play." Well, yes, but who won the lousy game? The headline speaks to an unfounded accusation by Senator Ted Stevens, capably reported by Bishop, that the release of the report was timed to influence the current ANWR debate against oil development. The assertion is laughable on a number of fronts. Consider that the NAS report is hardly an environmentalist manifesto. Even a cursory analysis of its contents finds that the authors acknowledge many positive impacts of oil development, including "improvements in schools, health care, housing, and other community services." Also: "There have been substantial improvements in [oil field] technologies, especially of exploration, and the operators have been taking increased care." Not exactly radical greenie propaganda. Furthermore, the Stevens accusation—and indeed the News-Miner’s—that the report was two and a half years late, that the NAS intentionally withheld the report on a dusty shelf until the moment it could be dramatically dropped in the midst of the ANWR debate, is misleading. ANWR has been a hot-button issue for decades, and it is hard to imagine a time when the report could not be released in the middle of such a debate. In reality, the report is over two and a half years in the making, and its publication is only a few months past its proposed deadline, a fact noted in the News-Miner article, but not reflected in its headline. The NAS report is a 452-page document with dozens of separate authors. How interesting that Stevens felt compelled to deride a government bureaucracy for publishing this behemoth a few months late—gasp!—as though such a thing has never before happened in the clockwork-efficient machinery of the U.S. government. The senator’s press release on the issue speculates that the report’s authors seek "to turn the clock back and put the Eskimos back in igloos and deny them energy, deny them any assistance of the Federal government, and deny them any income from the production of their lands." Funny, I searched the document and could find no such conclusion. It is worth noting that Sam Bishop does a commendable job of balancing the report’s findings with its political ramifications. He notes the manner in which both wilderness and development advocates seize on particular findings to further policy agendas, and he does not allow Stevens’ accusations to go unanswered. When the proposed study was first begun, the News-Miner editorialized that it would surely prove the absence of harmful effects, and vindicate the oil industry. The newspaper fervently believed that a glowing report would "provide policymakers and the public with a reassuring perspective for evaluating the predictable emotional appeals from preservationists" (Jan. 11, 2001). When looking for predictable emotional appeals, however, one needs look no further than our very own Ted Stevens. One of the more telling aspects of this affair is a press statement from the office of Stevens’ colleague and Alaska’s junior senator, Lisa Murkowski, noting that "she has not read the entire report in detail." Much like the copy editor at the News-Miner failed to read Bishop’s article before slapping it with an ill-conceived headline. | ||
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