Creative Headlining

Grrr (0.00 / 0)

That really irritated me, too.

The worst part is all the coverage of this is from the Union Leader perspective on the Concord Monitor story.  Here:

http://news.google.c...

Whatever happened to Google News citing blogs?  Our coverage is much better.

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by: Nicholas Gunn @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 09:33:30 AM CST

ouch! (0.00 / 0)

Man, horrible. How completely defamatory to our state.

Did the UL really feed that headline? Is there a way to see what the AP sent that out labelled as?

If it was the UL responsible for that spin, how nice that those reading the national press will now see us that way.

If it was the AP that fed that spin, shame on them.

The fact is that gay marriage has not passed legislative muster in any state. Opposition to gay marriage is a non-story. It's not what's under discussion. To throw that on as a headline is irresponsible.

I hate that this is the image of NH that gets projected.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 10:14:39 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Not True (4.00 / 1)

The fact is that gay marriage has not passed legislative muster in any state.

A bill for Gay Marriage (not Civil Unions) passed both houses of the California legislature.  The Governator then reversed a campaign promise and vetoed the bill.

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by: Nicholas Gunn @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 11:03:20 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It's typical of the Union Leader (0.00 / 0)

Nothing suprises me anymore. Luckily, most of the Leader's readership understands that they are reading right-wing propaganda. Some subscribe to the paper because they agree with the paper's point of view and wouldn't support civil unions anyway. The more reasonable subscribers are those that simply want to read local news and they can cut through the filter to see the truth most of the time.

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by: itstime @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 10:24:07 AM CST

Bills in the legislature (4.00 / 1)

There appear to be more than two from the LSRs:

2007-H-0027-R: establishing civil unions in New Hampshire.
Sponsors: (Prime) Steve Vaillancourt

2007-H-0190-R: relative to the solemnization of marriages.
Sponsors: (Prime) Daniel C Itse

2007-H-0333-L: permitting same sex couples to register a domestic union and have the same rights as married couples.
Sponsors: (Prime) James R Splaine

2007-H-0381-R: requiring that a marriage license be accepted as proof of identification.
Sponsors: (Prime) Maureen C Mooney

2007-H-0688-R: relative to the marriage license fee.
Sponsors: (Prime) David B Campbell

2007-H-0892-R: relative to marriage licenses and relative to marriage prohibitions.
Sponsors: (Prime) Maureen Baxley

2007-H-0893-R: relative to the recognition of out-of-state marriages.
Sponsors: (Prime) Marlene M DeChane

2007-H-0996-R: relative to the definition of marriage. Providing that marriage between one man and one woman shall be the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.
Sponsors: (Prime) Dudley D Dumaine
Daniel C Itse

A few of these may be only tangetially related to marriage equality.

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by: elwood @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 10:26:42 AM CST

Interesting (0.00 / 0)

2007-H-0892-R: relative to marriage licenses and relative to marriage prohibitions.
Sponsors: (Prime) Maureen Baxley

Maureen Baxley was the executive director for New Hampshire Freedom to Marry.

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by: Nicholas Gunn @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 11:06:51 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I know Jim Splaine posts on NH Insider (0.00 / 0)

Perhaps we could get him to answer questions about his bill here. I'll send out an email today.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 10:33:38 AM CST

I think many editors (0.00 / 0)

will agree with the AP headline and consider the Monitor's headline to be the one that spins.

The most straightforward reading of the poll begins with its first question, the one on gay marriage. Many journalists would consider "Most in NH Oppose Gay Marriage" a neutral summary, whereas highlighting other aspects (e.g., "45% Open to Same Sex Marriage" or the follow-up question) is considered  less neutral. And the results on civil unions were a bit ambiguous: a plurality support them, but 16% are undecided.

Mike, you make a good point that the poll finding on gay marriage is not "news," since no state has voted to institute them yet. But that's a bit more sophisticated.

I generally cut papers some slack on headline choice. I believe it is still the case that the reporter doesn't choose them, but rather an editor who factors in font size, column widths, and so on -- for dozens of stories every day. I'm more critical of slant in the body of the piece.

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by: elwood @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 10:42:52 AM CST

While that's true (0.00 / 0)

I agree the most unambiguous headline is what they printed. And your defense has softened my stance somewhat.

But as you mention, my point is that the poll's real world significance is not about the gay marriage bit.

"NH Opposes Gay Marriage" is sort of like saying "NH Opposes Kucinich". It's not really the thing currently under consideration.

But you are right, I may be asking too much of the headline.

What I don't like is how that headline seems to ripple out... there's this idea in web marketing called "micro-content" and what it says is the reach of an email subject line, a piece of link text, a headline, a google search result -- all of these things reach infinitely more people than the article.

And there's a thing in linguistics called Relevance Theory. Basically it states there's only one contextual uber-rule for decoding utterances: the assumption that your interlocutor is being maximally relevant.

Hence if we are deciding between coffee shop A and coffee shop B, and I say "Let's go to B. They have french fries there." you would be absolutely correct in saying I asserted that coffee shop A does NOT have french fries.

This headline asserts that NH is particularly unfertile ground for same-sex partnership legislation, despite the poll seeming to affirm that NH was pretty much in line with national trends.

Reading your response, I agree, I can't really be enraged here. But the headline is still wrong, and probably harmful.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 11:20:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

For what it's worth (4.00 / 1)

The Valley News headlined it thus:

Poll: Most Unopposed to Civil Unions

...the Doo Dah Man once told me you've got to play your hand. Sometimes the cards ain't worth a dime if you don't lay 'em down.

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by: rambler american @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 18:06:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm waiting for the UL headline (4.00 / 1)

based on this Monitor poll info that reads:

STATE OVERWHELMINGLY DISAPPROVES OF UNION LEADER EDITORIAL BOARD'S TAKE ON DROP-OUT AGE

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by: Dean Barker @ Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 11:22:04 AM CST