Friday, November 01, 2019
Headlines for Nov. 1, 2019
Worst, Most Misleading & Funniest Headlines for Nov. 1, 2019
The week of the rapidly mutating headlines:
*Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48
Changed to: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48
Buried in the article, and harking back to the original headline, is this reminder that the "death toll of the Iraq invasion" continues to this day:
"[Baghdadi] spent his early adult years as an obscure academic, aiming for a quiet life as a professor of Islamic law. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 upended his plans and launched him on a course toward insurgency, prison and violent jihad."
*Lebanon Battles to Be Born at Last
[Original opening line of the subhead, since deleted: The Middle East could use a decent country.] One million Lebanese protesters are demanding change. Hezbollah has other ideas.
*Chile’s People Have Had Enough [of Neoliberalism]
*Chile’s protests are a result of the country’s economic success
Brilliant insight from Andrés Oppenheimer, who wrote “Castro’s Final Hour”…in 1993!
Chile Cancels APEC Summit, Where U.S. Hoped to Sign Deal With China
Chile cancels international conference where Trump hoped to sign trade deal with China
Both carefully avoiding mentioning the *reason* for the cancellation in the headline.
*How millennials have killed the Manhattan power lunch
Lest you get the wrong idea, it's NOT that the article is about how most millenials struggle to pay their rent and afford food at McDonalds. It's about how younger executives prefer lighter dishes and mineral water to prime rib and martinis, and pick at salads at their desks.
*The crazy Hillary Clinton-Tulsi Gabbard fight
Without rehashing the whole Clinton v. Gabbard controversy, I just wanted to highlight this one line: Gabbard "repeating the RT-approved phrase 'regime change war' nine times in the last Democratic debate"
*Russia is openly honing its fake-news skills in Africa
There isn’t a word in this article about any false news. Example: “Another ad taken down by Facebook pushed for a real-life Russian policy that could help advance Prigozhin's goals in the CAR. The publication featured a photo of Putin and CAR president Faustin-Archange Touadéra at the Africa summit with a caption urging the UN to lift the arms embargo imposed on the country to allow for Russia's supplies of heavy weapons.”
*How Americans Split on Health Care: It’s a 3-Way Tie
The article totally omits the actual numbers, but if you click on the link in the article to the actual survey, the result is 32% favor Medicare for All, 28% for improving the ACA, and 29% for replacing the ACA with letting states design their own health insurance systems. Definitely close, but also definitely not a 3-way tie; Medicare for All is clearly the favorite choice. However…where was “the existing system” in this survey? Or just “scrap the ACA and go back to what we had before”?
But today about an Iowa poll (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/us/politics/iowa-poll-warren-biden.html) : “Warren Leads Tight Iowa Race” in which we have Warren 22, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 18, Biden 17
But today about an Iowa poll (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/us/politics/iowa-poll-warren-biden.html) : “Warren Leads Tight Iowa Race” in which we have Warren 22, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 18, Biden 17
