Sometimes the real story, the real message, in a news story or column is not in the piece itself. It is in its placement vis-a-vis other pieces on the same page.
An excellent example of this appeared on the New York Times web site today.
Right up top this morning, next to a Bob Herbert column headed “The Lunatics’ Manual,” was an op ed from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner headed “Welcome to the recovery.”
Now the two pieces were actually about very different subjects. Herbert was recounting the sad state of our horrendously over-stretched military, fighting two wars that most Americans now believe are needless and wasteful, and how this has generated a tragic number of suicides in the ranks. Geithner’s op ed, on the other hand, was the usual economist numbers pointing to better times twaddle levened with crocodile tears about how so many Americans still are suffering such hard times anyway — the standard Administration rap combo these days, aimed at convincing the country that the worse we all feel doesn’t compare in reality terms with the numbers the best and brightest churn out and deem worth a genuflect.
Still, two opinion pieces on very different subjects with bumping headlines that seem in an eery way to suggest that one of these opinions is cuckoo. Hmmm.
Another excellent example of the truth-in-placement phenomenon I came across yesterday on the MarketWatch web site. There, after the stock market closed yesterday with the Dow up 209 points for the day, was a headline and subhead explaining this big jump. Positive news on global and US manufacturing was given as the primary factor at work.
Right next to to this head and subhead, however, right there where one couldn’t possibly miss it, there was a graph showing reports dealing with manufacturing globally and in this country. This graph clearly showed manufacturing here and everywhere has actually been going down for months and continued to do so last month.
So how could this be good news that contributed greatly to a huge market bump? Because this bad news beat analyst expectations. And based on this page placement what can a reader infer? Bad is good and down is really up if a few people labeled “analysts” say that this is the case.
Or maybe not.
You’ll find lots of true reality in page placement examples if you look for them hard enough. Truth seekers might enjoy the exercise.
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