Quality newspaper that!
No takers?
Apparently not. If only the Mail had been wringing its hands and crying why-oh-why did the teachers go on strike and condemn this innocent child to death, eh? But that only happened in your mind, and all I came away with was a sense of bizarre but random tragedy. Never mind, better luck next time.
You didn’t find it odd that they mentioned the strike in the headline? Didn’t seem like they were trying to tie the strike to the tragedy? If not, fair enough.
The headline has, presumably, been updated because when I click on the OP’s link, the headline I see is “Tears for girl, 13, crushed to death by a falling branch as she sat on park bench”
So what did it originally say?
It originally said “Girl 13, crushed to death by a falling branch as she sat on park bench because her teachers were on strike”.
The Daily Mail is a bit like a print version of FOX News for the British. It really is a massive load of shite.
They haven’t fixed the page title yet. It’s:
Teachers’ strike: Sophie Howard, 13, killed by falling branch while school was closed
Dickheads.
They do manage to slip it in later on: “She was off school on Thursday afternoon, when the accident happened, as the teachers’ strike over pensions meant lessons were cancelled.”
What raised my eyebrows the highest is that they chose to include a photo of her wearing a freaking hardhat.
mmm
I think perhaps that’s ok, but as part of the headline it just seemed tacky imho.
Bad headlines like that are one of my pet peeves.
There is a story in my local paper today with the headline
“NBA lockout even impacts Chris Bosh wedding list”
The story? The NBA is granting an exemption, and team personnel will be allowed to attend the wedding. So the “impact” is that people who were already on the guest list will be able to attend.
I’m not a fan of headline writers…I don’t want the headline to be cute…or misleading. I don’t want to have to guess what the story is about. I want it to give me enough information to know if I want to click through to read the story. Is that too much to ask?
-D/a
Bingo - that was just bizarre…
Could you give a little more detail, I don’t click links when it’s unclear as to where it will take me.
I’ve edited the title to give it a little more specific description so posters will know what the thread (and news story) is related to.
The Daily Mail is a British tabloid, inexplicably popular in the US, presumably due to its online focus on celebrity gossip. Domestically it’s a dreadful right wing glurge fest. Other details about the story are in the thread.
Apart from the less crass headline, the content of the article has changed since last night. This is new:
Nice of the Daily Mail to respect that far enough to take it out of the headline, but the insinuation is left intact in the body of the article and even the title of the page.
Not really surprising, when you consider the source - The Daily Mail is a vile, shameless rag, and the editorial content that finds its way into their coverage of the news is frequently appalling. (eg; “Abortion Hope in ‘Gay Gene’ Finding,” which would be hilarious as a Colbert-type send-up of news for social conservatives, but is deeply depressing when you know that it represents the earnest position of a mainstream publication with a huge circulation.)
The New York Daily News and the New York Post compete for the cutest or punniest hotline (e.g., “Ford to City: Drop Dead” or Headless Body In Topless Bar"). They had a particularly good time writing the headlines for the stories about Anthony Weiner’s weiner.
Even the august New York Times succumbs to this impulse, as in this headline about a controversy in the Gay Softball World Series: “Three Straights and You’re Out in Gay Softball League.”
In other words, the headline of the thread was misleading.
According to garius, they have very very good SEO, so that may explain part of it. I’ve certainly noticed that if I google a news story on just about any topic they are always either the first or second result.
And yes, the orginal headline was ridiculous - I noticed it when reading an article about the accident on BBC news - at the bottom there were links to articles on other news sites. Three of the four had some kind of variant on “Girl killed by falling branch”, the Mail was the only one which had included the not-all-that-relevant information about the strike.