# These headlines are practically indistinguishable! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 27, 2015, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680 "2015-04-27T22:18:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/1 "2015-04-27T22:18:48Z")
There’s a [website](http://www.allsides.com/news) that says it will bring together different slants on the news, so they’ll bring you the same story from the center, right, and left ideologically when they can. Can you guess which headlines are which? 1. Gay hotel owners apologize for hosting Ted Cruz event 2. Gay Businessman Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Ted Cruz Event 3. Cruz Hotelier Caves to Big Gay McCarthy Hate Machine ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/2 "2015-04-27T22:54:47Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Big Gay McCarthy (Which, coincidentally, was Roy Cohn’s pet name for him) The only surprising bit is a right wing reference to Mcarthyism as a pejorative. Now will “Gaystopo” gain the same traction as Feminazi and Islamofacist? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2015, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/3 "2015-04-27T23:23:29Z")
The word “Hotelier” seems kinda frenchy to come from a rightwing site. Also, I like that you can put a hyphen between any two words in the phrase “Big Gay McCarthy Hate Machine” and get a different amusing image. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/4 "2015-04-28T00:20:23Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > 1. Gay hotel owners apologize for hosting Ted Cruz event > 2. Gay Businessman Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Ted Cruz Event > 3. Cruz Hotelier Caves to Big Gay McCarthy Hate Machine Well 3 is obviously the right wing slant, but from the headlines alone, 1 and 2 are almost identical. Would a left-wing or centrist newspaper more likely mention a particular name? I don’t think there’s any way to tell. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/5 "2015-04-28T00:40:35Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Well 3 is obviously the right wing slant, but from the headlines alone, 1 and 2 are almost identical. Would a left-wing or centrist newspaper more likely mention a particular name? I don’t think there’s any way to tell. The middle one is the financial wonk source, that expects its readers to recognize big private industry players. Like Reuters. Or, except for the fact they’re really right-wing, the WSJ. Edit: Nope. And story number two basically just reported on story number one reporting the story. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/6 "2015-04-28T02:00:59Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Well 3 is obviously the right wing slant, but from the headlines alone, 1 and 2 are almost identical. Would a left-wing or centrist newspaper more likely mention a particular name? I don’t think there’s any way to tell. It’s probably silly to extrapolate from a single headline, but you could say that the left-leaning site would be more likely to portray a particular gay man as a person, without trying to make that the defining characteristic of him. That said, I don’t know if the centrist site could be said to be guilty of ‘othering’ because they seem to be providing more information (more than one gay hotel owner apologized) than the one on the left. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/7 "2015-04-28T16:32:34Z")
Face facts. The left wing site and the centrist site have similar headlines because both are reporting on reality. Decide for yourself whether that’s generally true. I can believe that there’s a story out there where the right and centre headlines would be similar and the left one strange but it’s pretty clear what’s going on with this story. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/8 "2015-04-29T15:19:21Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > There’s a [website](http://www.allsides.com/news) that says it will bring together different slants on the news, so they’ll bring you the same story from the center, right, and left ideologically when they can. > > Can you guess which headlines are which? > > 1. Gay hotel owners apologize for hosting Ted Cruz event > > 2. Gay Businessman Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Ted Cruz Event > > 3. Cruz Hotelier Caves to Big Gay McCarthy Hate Machine The middle one is the left-wing version because they don’t want to conflate the issue of hosting Ted Cruz with baking cakes for gay weddings. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-headlines-are-practically-indistinguishable/718680/9 "2015-04-29T15:46:39Z")
“Big Gay McCarthy Hate Machine” made me laugh. I always love some good editorializing right in the headline. I guess if that was an op-ed piece, it’s OK. If it purported to be straight news, not so much. Anyway, that’s kind of a cool site. Thanks for introducing me to it.