Today's Dueling Headlines

Back when I wrote "Albatross" I had a regular feature called "Today On Washington Journal" in which I discussed comments by callers to that show. People seemed to like it. And by people, I mean me.

I haven't hit on a regular feature here yet, and am hoping this will do. See. I have an old technology (pre-iPhone) cell, but I can view iGoogle. No audio or video, but headlines and stories. My home page has top stories from BBC, NYT, and CNN (plus weather, the Onion and the always lame Joke of the Day). I started noticing that even without Fax News, headlines about the same stories had decidedly different slants even though the stories beneath them were the same. Often exactly the same, having been supplied by AP or some other source. So far, CNN seems to have the slantiest, but that's just an impression. A few of these posts should prove whether there is a pattern. So here's how they will go - I'll post the headlines (sometimes only 2/3 of the sources have the story in the top 3), then a piece of the story, and then pass judgement. Decisions of the judge are final, but feel free to shout your comments into the wind.

Today's post was going to contrast the NYT headline "Iraq Combat to End By August 2010" with CNN's headline proclaiming that U.S. Troops would remain in Iraq indefinitetly after "withdrawl." However, CNN screwed me up by changing their headline to match the Times. I guess CNN got wind that I was going to blow this story wide open. Or, perhaps they read the story. But that's ok - I'll try again tomorrow.