Journalism used to be a great job but for the paperwork. Now, on top of that, we have audio, video, photos, slideshows, blogs, wikis and web pages. If we’re to attend to them all, we’ve got to be more efficient. Peter Wilby, in today’s Media Guardian, has a useful suggestion: avoid reading crackpot conspiracy stories asking “Was Diana murdered?” and “Is this Christ’s tomb?”. I’d go further: avoid any stories with a question mark at the end of the headline. If the writer had the answer, he or she wouldn’t be asking the question, so skip the time-wasting speculation.
Quotation marks in headlines (other than on court reports) are usually another indication of what you can safely surf over. If you read a headline saying
Kerr ‘stole’ website idea
the allegation is unlikely to be borne out by the story. The story may say someone thinks I stole the idea, but if the newspaper or website was convinced of that, it wouldn’t be using those quotation marks. So move on, and read some proper reporting.