The homepage headline: Acid attack victim gets face transplant. The second line of the article: Carmen Blandin Tarleton’s face was unrecognizable after the lye attack, burned away in the frenzy of an estranged husband’s rage.
Learn your basic chemistry, you hacks. Or is this kind of thing one of those problems you’re hoping to solve by getting rid of telecommuting?
The idiocy of the comments are almost refreshing compared to the idiocy of the headline. Seriously, can’t anyone actually write a factually correct, non-misleading headline these days?
A similar degree of scientific literacy was displayed in the San Francisco Chronicle some months back when, in an article on local wildlife, they published a picture of a fully developed frog and described it as “newly hatched.” The text of the article also referred to “baby” frogs hopping around.
This is kind of like how all shotguns, be they rifles, muskets, BB guns or whatever turn into “assault weapons”. It’s just a term used to lump a bunch of things together. Likewise, lye is corrosive, so it’s an acid. It’s stupid, it’s ignorant, and reporters should make it a point to learn the difference.
This is why I will speak in favor of the headline.
Base Attack - this sounds stupid
Chemical Attack - better, but overly vague
Lye Attack - this is very accurate, but depends on your audience knowing exactly what lye is and why it might be bad to be attacked with it
Acid Attack - scientifically inaccurate, but gives readers an immediate impression of what was done to the woman.
As to it being misleading, does it really matter to the news consuming public if this woman was attacked with lye or sulphuric acid? the narrative doesn’t change in the slightest.
while caustic would be an accurate word it is used commonly as an adjective referring to language or an adjective referring to a substance. it is not as commonly used as a noun.
corrosive would also be an accurate word but that would throw off the headline.
Irrelevant to any species found in San Francisco, or the USA for that matter, and specifically to the western chorus frog, which is what was being referenced in the article.
See the AP logo down there? Is that an abbreviation for Yahoo!? Like Huffington, Yahoo writes some original content but posts a lot of content from elsewhere, like AP and Reuters.
