This article at The Globe and Mail – actually from the AP, so it’s probably one of hundreds or thousands of instances of it – has the headline “Israel unleashes fiercest assault in Beirut after Haifa attacked.” I posted this comment:
I’m concerned by this headline – it seems to reverse the order of events. It makes the Haifa attack seem almost a postscript — when in fact it was the event that forced Israel to retaliate. In fact, why was the Israeli response characterized as a “fierce assault” that was “unleashed” while the rockets fired at civilian targets in Haifa are just an “attack”? According to my dictionary, the word “assault” implies a greater degree of viciousness than the simple “attack”. I’d question the editorial stance that makes a rocket launch at civilian targets an “attack” and the military response an “assault”.I hope you will consider revising this headline to restore the correct order of events and to remove the editorializing adjectives.
Thank You,
Avi Flax
I didn’t want to actually suggest a headline; I thought it might make the editors somewhat indignant and dismissive of my point. But I did come up with what I think would be a more reasonable headline; something like: “Hezbolla Fires Rockets on Haifa; Israel Responds with Airstrikes”.
Update: As of 3:30PM EST today, the headline had already been changed, along with much of the article, to focus on the deaths of 8 Canadian citizens in Lebanon. The new headline is “Eight Canadians killed in airstrikes on Lebanon.” I’m glad the old biased headline was changed, but I’m confused by the changes. It doesn’t make sense to me for an article to evolve over the matter of a few hours, changing topics and content. If all articles and similar publications become that fluid, that will be severely problematic for accountability — not to mention an intelligible discourse. How can people have a conversation about a piece if everyone’s reading a different version?
