Today, I explain why you simply cannot form opinions based on headlines.
This is the Cronin Theory of Pop Culture, a collection of positions I’ve collected over the years that I think hold pretty true.
I totally get it, not everyone is going to read every article that they come across. I 100% get that, and am obviously fine it.
Similarly, obviously, speaking as a writer who occasionally writes articles with other people coming up with the headlines, yes, sometimes headlines can be a bit misleading.
So yes, there are two things working at play here – you don’t have time to read everything, and the headlines might have been intentionally misleading, which isn’t YOUR fault.
HOWEVER, what IS your fault is if you FORM AN OPINION based just on a headline, and not on reading the article in question. You don’t have to read the article, but don’t try to form an opinion if you don’t read it.
Jimmy Fallon recently got a TON of shit online for a recent interview due to these headlines (and similar headlines) from EW.com and People.com (which are both owned by the same company):
He sounds pretty freakin’ bad in those headlines, right?
Here’s the ACTUAL QUOTE, though, from the People article:
Fallon was asked if he felt any pressure when writing his own show during a Tuesday, Sept. 30 interview on CNBC. He explained that the goal isn’t to make a political statement when putting together a monologue.
“Our show has never really been that political, you know. We hit both sides equally, and we try to make everybody laugh, and that’s really the way our show works,” he said.
“Our monologues are kind of the same that we’ve been doing since Johnny Carson was hosting the Tonight Show. So really, I just keep my head down and make sure the jokes are funny,” Fallon added.
The Saturday Night Live alum complimented his staff of “clever, smart writers,” stressing, “We’re just trying to make the best show we possibly can and entertain everybody.”
That’s the most inoffensive shit imaginable. This is nothing! It’s just a normal thing for a middle-of-the-road TV host to say, and certainly not at ALL what the headlines said, and not at all what he was getting shit on for saying.
Be better, people, you don’t have to read the article, but you can’t form an opinion based just on a headline, because the headline might be like these headlines, which are kind of sort of not LIES, but pretty freaking close to lying.
