Dishonest Headlines

A recent online headline shouted Goodbye Walmart: Every Store Closing This Year (the delite.com)

You might think by this the entire wildly successful Walmart chain is going out of business. It clearly says that every Walmart is closing, does it not?

But the article goes on to talk about other chains that are pulling back from brick-and-mortar stores and instead doing more business online. A few chains indeed are declaring bankruptcy and apparently going out of business. Walmart is not one of them, although they are increasing their online sales.

NASA’s SLS Rocket Tore Open Like a Tin Can 

Good heavens. Was anybody killed? Did NASA royally screw something up?

No and no.

Turns out this was only an intentional test to structural failure to determine maximum allowable stress.

‘In Front of TV Camera!’ Buzz Aldrin’s Moon Landing ‘Simulator’ Confession Revisited (#Express)

“I knew it,” some might say from this headline. “I knew they never did go to the Moon. It was all faked.”

Not so, though. Neil and Buzz did indeed make that historic 1969 trip. The article is only about how surprised Buzz was to find out how easy it was to get around in gravity one-sixth that of Earth, even burdened by his bulky space suit. By hopping about he demonstrated that ease for the vast TV audience spellbound by the astonishing successful achievement, a milestone unlike any other in man’s continuing explorations.

Michael Collins Moon Landing Admission Exposed

What?

No big admission, except he feels highly privileged to have been a part of that mission, even though he had to wait 21 hours alone in the moon-orbiting command module Columbia, the trio’s lifeboat for getting back home, while Neil and Buzz gathered rocks and all the glory down on the surface.

Scientific Red Flag Spotted in Milky Way’s Dark, Dusty Center—Oddity Moving Toward Earth (SciTech Daily)

Good Lord, what now? A global pandemic, paroxysmal worldwide protests, a political quagmire, a big recession, now on top of all that something insidious is about to collide with our planet, for Pete’s sake?

Nope. There’s just a curious patch of ionized hydrogen gas so many light years away in Sagittarius (each light year is six trillion—that’s six thousand billion—miles) it’s of no threat to us whatsoever and never will be, although it does appear to be drifting our way.

Supernatural forces the reason this city has dodged hurricanes for nearly a century?

Hardly. Some people do think the few ancient burial mounds of the extinct Tocobaga tribe near Tampa that have survived the frenzied local development might be protecting the city from hurricanes because they have not suffered through a major storm for a century. But a far more likely reason is the natural tracks hurricanes take in that area due to well understood meteorological conditions.

I understand a reporter’s strong compulsion to power up, slant, and shade headlines to hook readers, to stand out a bit amid the avalanche of news stories, but I think there’s a dark side to untruthful headlines. We’re all seeing at best confusing and at worst outright untruthful statements coming from our leaders at several levels every day, with a constant proliferation of blatantly fake news on the Net, and that makes us all increasingly skeptical of all our news in general. What and who are we supposed to believe?

There was a time such headlines were reserved for the worst kind of journalism as evidenced in supermarket tabloids. Elvis sightings. UFO testimonials. Scandals of every kind, a few true, most made up. Now this stuff sadly seems to be bleeding over into our broader news.

It’s critical in dire times such as these that we at least have the truth we can all cling to. An honest base on which we can make wise decisions. Let’s hope more journalists will reduce the seedy hype and do their jobs objectively and honestly.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

Check out the acclaimed suspense series Guns, Diamondback, Kllrs, and Deathsman in print or Kindle on Amazon for some distracting pandemic reading.

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