Some deception in headlines can be detected simply by reading the article

Barack Obama was the 12th best president in American history. At least, that's what some headlines told us. Some sources were a bit better than that and clarified that this was according to a C-SPAN poll.



We can trust C-SPAN, can't we? In this particular case, it was best to keep reading. How did C-SPAN reach their conclusions? What was their methodology?

As it turns out, C-SPAN selected a number of historians, especially those involved in academics, to rate the performance of each president in a number of categories based off their personal opinions. In other words, they asked liberals for their opinions. Obviously, this poll never should have been taken seriously.

Of course, it's impossible to provide truly accurate and objective measures of anything that is subjective in nature. That means that you would have had to defy common sense in order to trust that poll. Unfortunately, I found many people online stating the idea that Obama was our 12th best president as fact. If they either would have read about the methodology or had common sense, they would have known better.

Part of the problem here is that the media frequently relies on headlines to convince people to read their articles. By getting people to read, they can gain advertising revenue. Headlines are not meant to inform. They are meant to grab attention. This is why you should never use headlines as a valid information source.

Another example I can provide was a poll that I have mentioned numerous times from Pew. Many mainstream news sources inaccurately reported that conservatives said that they held negative views of higher education. Although this mistake was frequently included in the body of the text, many sources provided a more accurate depiction of the poll. The poll asked about colleges and universities. For those of us who differentiate between schooling and education, this misportrayal from the media was a whopper.

This example still isn't perfect. To this day, the mainstream media periodically writes articles with the mention of conservatives' negative views of higher education. If more people would have read past the headlines, the discrepancy in wording would have been recognized. It would be far less likely that the mainstream media would be able to continue with their deceit.