Surely Nitpicking Newspaper Headlines is the Key to Defeating Trump!

Twitter editors find the cheat code that will re-elect Biden

Generated by AI Imagine Art with the prompt “Picasso-style drawing of a frantic person typing at a computer”.

Biden supporters scored a huge win this week. Look at this:

We did it! Take THAT, Donald! You see, the original headline said “Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon”, but when Twitter users noted that Trump’s felon status is a fact, the Times changed the headline to “Biden Campaign Ad Calls Attention to Trump’s Felon Status”. Let’s see if Biden has surged ahead in the polls after this stunning victory:

Okay, nothing yet. But there’s often a lag on these things — I predict a 50 point Biden lead by the end of the week. Especially now that the Twitter Ombudsman Cloud has turned their attention to this Washington Post headline:

I wouldn’t call myself a “journalist” — my top-performing article this week was a string of fart jokes, so I’m not exactly feverishly checking my mail for commendation from the Pulitzer committee. But I would guess that the Post put quotes around “convicted criminal” to indicate that the ad used the exact phrase “convicted criminal”. They would have done this for much the same reason that an article about this post might use quotes in the headline “Blogger Mocks ‘Pedantic Dorks’ Who Spend Lives Nit-Picking Headlines”. Because I am, indeed, calling people who nitpick these headlines a bunch of pedantic dorks.

A cadre of dedicated ref-workers¹ has arisen on the left. They roughly mirror the ref-workers who have existed for decades on the right; we now seem to have bipartisan consensus that the New York Times sucks. For what it’s worth, I think the ref-workers sometimes have a point: I actually agree that “Biden Campaign Ad Draws Attention to Trump’s Felon Status” is a more accurate headline than “Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon”. And I support accurate journalism 100 percent of the time. But I hope that nobody is tricking themselves into believing that any of this headline wordsmithing will make a fat frog’s foreskin of difference in the election.

Who reads the New York Times and Washington Post? People like you and I do, which is to say: People who have made the tragically misguided decision to wallow in the muck of politics instead of going outside and experiencing the splendor of God’s creation. Almost no undecided voter reads the Times or the Post. Most undecided voters get their news from the ten minutes of CNN that they watch at the airport, guys on Twitch playing League of Legends, or TikTok influencers who mostly do makeup tutorials. As is often the case, The Onion said it best 20 years ago:

To the extent that there’s a case that legacy media affects the election — and I do think there’s a case — that case is about the coverage writ large, not about the wording of specific headlines. I agree, for example, that the media’s habitually negative framing of economic news affects perceptions — I’ve written about that before. But that complaint is about the net effect of all coverage, and specifically the effect of doing “human interest” stories about the small number of people doing badly in a good economy instead of prioritizing data that give the broader picture. Fretting over the scintilla of difference between the phrasing of headline A and the phrasing of headline B feels like shooting heroin and worrying about the calories.

It also beggars belief to imagine that there might still be people who need to be informed that Trump is bad. After a decade of Trump the politician and four decades of Trump the awful human being, most people know what they think of Trump. I can’t imagine anyone still thinking: “I have no opinion of this Trump fellow. Anyhoo, time for my daily reading of the New York Times, and — WHAT’S THIS??? ‘Biden Campaign Ad Draws Attention to Trump’s Felon Status’? I can tell from the forceful phrasing that Biden’s ad didn’t merely characterize Trump as a felon — Trump’s status as a felon must be a settled fact! I, a New York Times reader, did not know that! This news will prove to be dispositive in the casting of my vote!” There’s no way that guy exists, and there’s no way that anyone actually believes that guy exists.

The endless headline correcting is just a thing that the Twitter left does now. It’s a social custom, like removing your shoes in Japan or flashing your tits at Mardi Gras. It probably started with the 2016 push to get the Times to say that Trump “lied”, which, as we all know, ended Trump’s career. It’s probably also related to the progressive left’s recent turn against the Times; “the Times is a right-wing newspaper” is simply a Thing That Is Known on the progressive left now. And because the habit has social cache, it would probably survive even if everyone were to agree that it doesn’t do a damn thing.

I hope that Biden wins. And I think that media should always be as accurate as possible. But I recognize the headline-policing game as a silly little sideshow. It has more to do with signaling group membership than it does with improving journalism. And I hope that no one thinks that if we just do it better and more, Biden will win.

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1. If you’re not familiar with the term: Complaining about media coverage in the hopes of cultivating more favorable coverage for your side is often called “working the refs”. It comes from sports, where coaches scream at refs in the hope of getting more favorable calls.