OCTOBER 11, 2006

       Headlines are a funny thing.  The point of them is to give the reader a preview of the story that follows.  Whether it’s on television or in a newspaper the viewer should be able to get the gist of the story just by reading its headline.

       But lately I’ve found there is a lot of irrelevant information in headlines.  People are dwelling on and remembering details that really make no difference in what the story is actually about.

       For instance, at the beginning of October the massacre at a Colorado school was immediately called the “Amish school shooting”.  Report after report was telling us that the incident happened at an Amish school in an Amish community and Amish people were killed. 

       What is the relevancy in pointing out over and over again that the people involved in this case are Amish?  Is the viewing public supposed to feel more shocked because this happened in an Amish community?  The fact is innocent people got killed.  Whether they were adults, children, males, females, white, black, the point is they were murdered.

       No matter whom it happens to or where it takes place, the message is the same – people were senseless killed by a crazed gunman.  If the story was about someone targeting the Amish, I understand the relevance in pointing out that the killer had a problem with a certain group of people and it would be considered a hate crime.  But in this instance he was a member of the community.

       I’m reminded of a few weeks earlier when a student went into a Montreal school and started shooting people, killing a young woman.  Did news reports start flashing “French school shootings”?  No.  Whether it was an English or French school made no difference.  The tragedy happened in Montreal and that’s what was reported. 

       Most recently there is a scandal with U.S. Congressman Mark Foley who conversed with a young man on the Internet.  The online conversations and e-mails became inappropriate for someone of the boy’s age and it turned into a huge scandal.

       This situation made me wonder why over and over again it was reported that the congressman was targeting “a boy”.  Was the scandal made to be a bigger deal because the congressman is gay?  Had it been a little girl he was chatting with, would we have been reminded repeatedly of her gender?

       “Foley’s gay sex scandal” one headline read.  Have you ever seen a headline say something like, “Politician has affair with opposite sex”?

       Does it really make a difference that the child in the story was a boy?  Does it make the situation worse because these are two people of the same gender?  The answer should be no.  The point is that Foley had contact and inappropriate conversations with a minor. 

       It’s interesting to see what details of a story people find important.  It seems that quite often the real story gets brushed aside for the insignificant information and we focus on stuff that doesn’t matter.