Saturday, September 03, 2011

What’s in a Headline . . . or not.

The Denver Post published a story today with the headline “Colorado ranch owner plans lawsuit after PUC rules against his appeal.” Clearly, another family farmer abused by the government …

Just reading the headline, one gets the impression that the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) doesn’t care if it ruins a hard working rancher’s family legacy. Unfortunately, many of us, believing we got the point, will stop at the headline.

In this case, the interior story is much different. In the third paragraph, “Colorado ranch owner” Louis Bacon is identified as “billionaire hedge-fund manager Bacon.”

Is this really a travesty against the little guy or a story about a whiny billionaire who doesn’t want power lines interfering with the view of his 170,000 acre ranch in the picturesque Rocky Mountains? That’s for you to decide, but don’t decide until you have sufficient information.

You can’t just read the headlines and walk away; you’ve got to read the story. The 18 second news story on television and radio doesn’t tell you much; you’ve got to dig a little. The one sentence argument doesn’t tell you the story; do the math.