Sometimes you have to wonder about headlines in the news. I just saw one today which stated wind power will account for another quarter of a million jobs. It doesn’t state the obvious however, which is how many people will lose their jobs when fossil fuel is replaced? Will there really be a quarter of a million more jobs created, or will we break even as we lose jobs in the other sectors, will we even lose jobs overall? It would be nice if some of these articles would reflect the overall picture and not be just another sensational misleading article or headline. Let me give you another example, I read an increase in robotic devices being manufactured would also create more jobs, but obviously this is even a more ridiculous statement than the one about wind power, after all what is the purpose of a robot? It’s sole purpose is to replace people. It might also have an auxiliary purpose which would be more efficiency or saving money. If I were to hire five hundred people to create thousands of robots to be used in service jobs there certainly wouldn’t be any gain in employment under those circumstances because these robots would replace thousands of people and maybe more.

It used to be people would get their news from several different newspapers or from television or the radio, but today we get news from everywhere. This has caused huge problems and credibility. When we get our news from social media or blogs we have no way of knowing what is true and what isn’t. I just heard the other day somebody put up a completely fictitious news story, because he wanted to see how long it would take to spread around the Internet. People like this are doing a tremendous disservice to the rest of us. If we think about this we can see how these sources can be used to create disinformation. It is bad enough when the recognized news media slants some of the news to make it more exciting and get more viewers or listeners, but to create fictitious stories out of thin air is unforgivable. I’m not saying people can’t make a mistake. Somebody may put up a story which they believe is true, this has even happened to news media. I remember one story which I read and immediately did not believe it. It was in one of the big New York City newspapers and it stated gorillas in Africa were going door to door in a village looking for a lost baby gorilla. My coworker had read the story to me and I laughed and said I just can believe this. The next day a retraction was put into the paper. The story had been copied from one of the press associations and was later found out to be false.

In this case the story was so outlandish it was easy to spot, but unfortunately that is not always true. One of the areas where false or over hyped stories appear every once in a while is in the area of health. How many times have we seen headlines stating this cure or that has been found for some disease and then we never hear about it again? If we throw in all the false ads about different devices which are supposed to cure different ailments we realize most of the stuff was only put into the news, because they knew it would attract attention and get you to go to a certain website or answer a certain email. Outlandish claims about devices curing diseases have been going on for hundreds of years, but it is only recently when some news outlets made some of these claims their headline story. One headline stated chocolate could be used to detect cancer, but it isn’t true. While it seems cancer requires sugar this has nothing to do with the headline.

The New Yorker magazine stated misleading headlines lead you astray. I don’t think we needed the New Yorker to know that. They also said you’ll never believe how important an accurate headline is and that is certainly true. Newspaper headlines and articles have been known to start wars. Newspapers are credited with actually starting the Spanish American War. When the United States battleship Maine blew up in the Cuban harbor, headlines started appearing in many of the major United States newspapers which claimed the Spanish had blown the ship up. It never mention the fact this type of battleship was prone to explosions, because of the location of its boilers and its powder magazine. Today most historians believe the explosion was caused by an accident, not by the Spanish Navy. If it wasn’t for the fact the newspapers had grabbed this story and pumped up the blood of the American public there may never have been a Spanish American War.

Some say first impressions really matter and psychologists will tell you this. Why am I mentioning this fact? I mentioning it because even when we see a false headline which is later proven to be false, a lot of people still say there might be some truth behind it. While the false headline may not have convinced people entirely, even when it is proven wrong it may have convinced some people and put doubt in their mind. I think we have to admit it, we see a plausible headline and later find out it isn’t true, it still might plant a seed of doubt in our heads. When we read news headlines we have no way of knowing if some of them are designed to get us to back certain government movements. An example of this might be planting false headlines against a certain country to rally the population of the United States against that country for political reasons. Remember all the headlines and stories that claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and how we were told they were using them on their own population? Remember what happened after that? We invaded that country with the full backing of the American population and yet none of what we were told was true.

It is very important when we read something to try and verify it before we buy it hook line and sinker. We can no longer rely on the fact the headline article is coming from a major news organization so it must be right, just as we can’t rely on the fact a blogger got a scoop. We have a lot more responsibility today when we read and hear things and before we repeat then we should make sure they are true.