What’s (not) in a headline

Margaret Sullivan, former public editor of The New York Times, has written at length about why mainstream headlines keep failing, as they present “a soft-focus, missing-the-point, safe-as-milk version of national politics.” And so I noticed this New York Times headline about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday: “A Defiant Kennedy Defends Vaccine Changes and C.D.C. Shake-Up.”

“Changes”? As any number of senators pointed out, Kennedy and company are effectively removing access to vaccines. “Shake-Up”? That means firing people who aren’t willing to go along with his lunatic agenda.

The latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American begins with a more accurate description:

Senators challenged the decisions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he testified before the Senate Finance Committee for about three hours today.

Condensed into a headline, that might read “Senators challenge Kennedy on vaccines and C.D.C. firings.”

Richardson reports a detail that the Times coverage of the hearing omits:

Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”

[I’ll grant that the Times subhead gives a more complete picture: “A three-hour hearing before the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the health secretary was on uncertain ground even with some Republicans who voted to confirm him.” But still. And as Sullivan and other observers have pointed out, many readers never go beyond the headlines.]