I saw a headline for a news story the other day that read, “Biker’s Poop Starts Wildfire.” Of course I had to read the journalistic feature to find out how this had possibly happened. I felt hoodwinked by the time I had finished the last sentence. It seems that a man was biking in an isolated area. He had a call of nature, specifically for a number two. Since there was nobody around he took a nice dump complete with cleaning himself with toilet paper that he had brought along just in case. Not knowing exactly what to do with the used paper he decided to burn it. Unfortunately the area was so dry that the tissue became a fire starter, quickly spreading and causing an out of control fire. 

I suppose that if you follow the sequence of events it might be construed that if the man had not voided his bowels he would not have needed to use paper to sanitize himself and there would have been no need to light the object that became kindling. The fact is that technically his poop did not start a wildfire. I was rather angry that I had fallen for the age old ploy of writing such a clever headline that it attracted my immediate attention. This tactic has been around for a very long time and is one of the reasons that I tell people all of the time that they can’t jump to conclusions just from a few carefully chosen words. It’s always wise to play a bit of detective work and find out the whole story.  

There was a great deal of talk about presidential contender, Mike Huckabee, recently as well. Several sources insisted that he had compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Now I have very little regard for Mr. Huckabee in general. I find him to be not particularly bright and a bit of a rube. Still, he has never struck me as a mean spirited man like let’s say Donald Trump. It seemed uncharacteristic to me that he would have made such a statement so I found his full comment in context and realized that it took a great inferential stretch to conclude that he views Barack Obama as a Hitler clone. The reality of the quote is that he was actually concluding that the President is quite naive in his belief that Israel will not be hurt by the potential deal with Iran. There was nothing there about Obama being purposely evil and intentionally willing to begin another Holocaust. Mr. Huckabee was perhaps guilty of hyperbole and choosing his words poorly but his insult of President Obama was more akin to comparing him to Neville Chamberlain than Adolf Hitler. That is a very different set of circumstances than much of the press had been stating.

Let’s face it. It seems as though people don’t take enough time these days to read long passages or attempt to find the truth. They don’t check their references and understand that news from Gawker will have one slant and that from Fox News quite another. When something just doesn’t ring true there is a good chance that it may be exaggerated. It’s up to educated readers to seek out the facts and not just accept sensational headlines and soundbites. 

I’ve always been intrigued by those trashy purveyors of pulp that call out from the end caps of grocery stores. The National Enquirer and Stars famously grab our attention with sensational images and stunning headlines. I’ve never purchased one of them nor taken the time to read more but if I had believed the headlines I would have expected President and Mrs. Obama to be shortly getting a divorce over the horrific fights that they have had in the White House. I’d also be in the know about how Michael Jackson has returned from the grave to steer his sister Janet’s comeback career. Somehow these journalistic rags manage to stay in business over the years although I fail to imagine how. I find myself feeling embarrassed for even glancing at the salacious come ons that blare from such gossipy mags.

The problem with sensational stories and their headlines is that they too often distract us from rational discussions of what is real. In a world of 24/7 news there is a tendency to go into overdrive when it comes to dealing with all of the information that is available. The purveyors of the latest news tend to pick and choose what they will cover and they need to grab attention from their competitors. The result is all too often driven more by ratings than by a desire to bring the audience the truth. A really clever headline may make the difference in whether a story from a particular source goes viral or simply languishes. We’re not likely to pay much attention to a tale of a dog biting a man but if the tables are turned and we hear of a man that bit a dog we may at least momentarily focus our attention.

Some of the worst offenders deal with science. Unfortunately the false information derived from junk research often lingers as the truth long after it has been disproven. All of the stories of young children developing autism after receiving vaccinations has led to a very dangerous movement to refuse the normal sequence of preventive shots for youngsters. The erroneous thinking has taken on a life of its own even though there is little or no evidence that childhood inoculations cause autism. Not even the danger of losing the herd immunity if a significant number of people fall for this ridiculous idea appears to be enough to change some people’s minds. 

I could go on and on and on. It only took one suggestion that Barack Obama is not an American citizen for countless people to believe that it is so. An indictment of Mitt Romney that accused him of neglecting to pay his income taxes never quite went away even after the story was proven to be false. The real horror of those attention grabbing headlines is that they sometimes ruin reputations  without any proof to back them up. They are the product of lazy journalism and they can have a profound effect on the way people make decisions. 

I’ll admit that I often attempt to be clever in developing titles for my blogs. If I am creative enough I might draw in a few more readers than if I keep it simple. There is always that temptation to ensnare a few more followers but I’d counsel anyone reading anything to challenge the ideas that just don’t sound quite right. The best way to do that is to find additional sources and to weigh the information carefully. There are just too many really important issues for us to get distracted when we see SQUIRREL! You may even have noticed that sometimes our attention is drawn away from the things that we most need to be talking about. 

It’s fine to worry about Cecil the Lion but we really need to talk about abuses in the abortion industry and how we are going to find a solid plan for immigration. While we are discussing Donald Trump we may not notice that California is burning because of a relentless drought. We may neglect to agree on how to preserve our precious natural resources when we are arguing about whether or not it’s Bruce or Caitlyn who is the star of a new reality show. 

We have too much at stake these days not to be careful. Our teachers taught us better than that. We learned to parse sentences and how to check our sources. We were drilled in the skill of drawing inferences and reading between the lines and asking pertinent questions. We can’t get lazy. The results of doing so might be our downfall. Jon Stewart may be exceedingly funny but when we use him as our main source of news we have a problem as a society.