I encountered an example of some horrible journalism this morning.
Over the years I been following the Flint water crisis, basically because my wife and I are from Michigan and my wife used to actually live in Flint and she still has a few cousins living there.
Anyway, this morning it was reported that the US Supreme Court has cleared the way for the residents of Flint to sue the city and state over their handling of the water crisis, however, depending on which headline you read, you might get two totally different ideas about what actually happened and what it meant.
Here is the headline from the first article a I read:
Supreme Court allows lawsuit against Flint city officials to advance
And here's the second headline:
Supreme Court won't take case prompted by Flint water crisis
The Supreme Court has declined to take a case stemming from the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan
See what I mean? Now read the two articles...
Link to the first:
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/479128-supreme-court-allows-lawsuit-against-flint-city-officials-to-advance
Link to the second:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/supreme-court-case-prompted-flint-water-crisis-68425366
In the first article, you've got the whole story in the first two paragraphs. In the second article, you have to read all the way to the very last word and even then, it's so poorly written that many people still might not get the point of what happened.
This is terrible journalism, as it appears that the intention was to NOT provide the reader with an account of what actually happened, but yet doing so in a way that could later be defended as being accurate, if EVERY word had been read. When you see something like this, you can't help but ask what the editorial intent of this media outlet was and WHO it is that they consider as their TRUE audience.
OCU
| 