Contradictory Headlines

Fox News: "Federal Trade Commission Says Oil Industry Did Not Manipulate Prices After Hurricane Katrina" [link]

ABC News: "FTC: Some Gas Price Gouging After Katrina" [link]


If you read the two headlines seperately, you would probably expect to find two very different articles. Actually, both stories were taken from the same AP story, and the content is virtually identical. Both articles mention 15 instances of price gouging, but no widespread market manipulation.

Even if there was no widespread market manipulation, I don't see how the Fox News headline is appropriate. 15 instances of price gouging hardly seems like nothing.


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ABC News: "Hurricane Center Predicts Calmer Season" [link]

Washington Post: "U.S. Predicts Busy Hurricane Season" [link]

Again, the content of the articles is virtually identical. The National Hurricane Center has predicted that the coming hurricane season should not match last year's record season, but that it should still be significantly above average. This one is maybe not quite so overtly contradictory as the previous example, but I thought it was pretty strange to see both examples in a single day.

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I do not believe in either a liberal or conservative bias in news, but rather in a bias toward profits, which often causes a bias toward sensationalism. The above two examples seem to illustrate this example well. The issues were not totally black and white, but the headlines necessarily had to choose sides. People don't want to hear the news, people want to have it boiled down, until it can hardly be said to represent the actual information.