The Power of Headlines

You know, one of the things I realized very late in life is the power of headlines in news of all sorts. If you, like me, are the sort to just generally browse the headlines - or what now flashes in 'Breaking news' - without bothering to go through all the fine print, you could end up getting a totally erroneous idea of what is happening in the world. Of course it is all to the good since everyone does the same and, after all, what everyone knows IS the truth regardless of what some strange people think is the 'real truth'. You know, though, this is one of those things that we invented way back in the past and forgot to claim the credit for. I mean, this use of headlines to manufacture the truth hails back to the ancient Indian history (or myth, for all those who are now called pseudo-sickular or some such quaint name.) Aswatthama Dead Now that was the headline Yudhishtir flashed and Drona, like us modern folks, did not go beyond the headline and chose to abandon the battle and got killed. Of course he can claim that he had a legit excuse. That when the fine print about 'Was it the man or was it the elephant?' was being said by Yudhishtir, Krishna and the other Pandavas blew their conches and drowned it out. But then, hey, for us too, the fine print is all drowned out by the pinging of various notifications from our multiple social media sites, not to mention the fact that the phone goes around in circles trying to locate the fine print. Really, though, it is not like we were all waiting for the modern folks and appliances to create the impression we wanted to create, regardless of the 'real' news. I mean, yeah, there were even those guys who read a few paragraphs of the news before jumping over to the next and, for them, we were prepared. So, the Aswatthama news would have been played out like this in the old days. "The valiant Bhima picked up his mace and answered the challenge of the mighty Aswathhama. Twirling his mace with wonderful dexterity, he deflected every attack. The mighty blows of Bhima seemed to have little impact on his courageous opponent. Undaunted the son of Pandu pressed his attack on his invincible foe."
And so on and so forth, for five to six paras till at the last, we would end with "And then fell the mighty Aswatthama to the valorous Pandava. When the dying breath of the mammoth elephant gusted out, the Pandava army roared with victory and praised the second son of Kunti, 'Hail, Bhima! Slayer of the great Aswatthama!"'
And there you were. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...except that the 'elephant' has a 'blink and you miss it' reference. It has been statistically proven 999 out of a 1000 people would come out convinced that Bhima had killed Drona's son. (AND the thousandth? HE would yawn and say, 'Did you say something?') Knowing this, and being such wonderful people in the PR department, it surprised me that the Finance Minister should have been talking of Auto sector job losses and said something like 'Millenials using Uber and Ola is also a reason for reduced demand'. Of course the headlines were 'Nirmala Sitharaman blames millenials for job losses in auto sector'. Naturally, no-one likes being blamed for anything and, if someone blames you, the mature mind always reacts by blaming that someone for everything from the great flood onward, doesn't it? Now if only she had said something like "Millenials are environment conscious and, so, prefer ride sharing services in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Good though this is, it does have the effect of depressing demand for cars." That, at least, would have opened out the possibility of a headline like "FM praises millenials for environment consciousness." Now, you really cannot troll someone who is busy praising you, can you? (You can? THAT is probably an ability that they forgot to install in us older models!) Anyway, this long an acquaintance with how a journalist can write ANY news so as to convey the message HE/SHE wants has left me in the 'No news is good news' frame of mind, where the 'good' is indicative of the quality of the news and not the nature of the news. This, even in the days when only the viewpoint was manufactured not the news itself. But the one indelible impression I want to leave in your minds is that HEADLINES ARE POWERFUL