How Waking Up Early in the morning could be Counterproductive blares the misleading headline from PopSugar. Yeah, well, what they mean is not getting enough sleep is unhealthy. Duh. Exercise has nothing to do with the problem.

The idea is that people get up early to exercise and this cuts into their regular sleep schedule. Exercise is almost always good for you barring extreme overworking.

So there you go. Get your sleep and exercise. You heard it here first.

Oh, and SugarPop, you win my not so weekly Misleading Headline of the Week award.

Tom Liberman

Japanese chess prodigy, 14, breaks 30-year winning streak record screams the headline. Yes, he is 14. Yes, he did break a winning streak record. No, it wasn’t chess. He plays chess and is reportedly good at it, but the streak was in a game called Shogi.

What’s wrong with a headline saying he broke a Shogi record? I’m a chess player and had never heard of a winning streak record so I was intrigued by the article. Nothing against Sota Fujii who is clearly a fine player of Shogi. I just wish the headline could have been more honest.

Tom Liberman

Stoned Assembly Line Workers Cost BMW $1 Million in One Day, Report Claims: Screams the misleading headline from TheDrive. The implication is BMW workers were high on marijuana and made some horrible mistake.

This one’s a doozy. If you read the headline and the first paragraph you’ll assume  the two BMW workers smoked a marijuana joint and then collapsed on the line causing a forty minute shutdown. This costs BMW about a million dollars.

It’s a good thing your trusty sniffer out of misleading headlines, that’s me, is on the case!

In the story we find out that one of the workers was way, way over the legal limit for alcohol and the other was flying on amphetamines. But, heck, let’s blame marijuana! Because it’s reported, but not confirmed, they smoked a joint before heading onto the line. Marijuana is an easy target. Mission accomplished Aaron Brown, you win for the most misleading headline. I sometimes let the author off the hook because the headline is generally written by someone else but Brown is an accomplice in the crime this time. The lead of his story is the marijuana use and, oh, by the way I’ll mention later, they were drunk as skunks and sailing on Crystal Meth.

This sort of thing is journalism at its worst. It’s designed specifically to be consumed by the anti-marijuana people of this world so they can pass it along in Facebook to everyone they know, that’s how I came across the story.

Always read the full story, my friends. Or come to me, because I do!

Tom Liberman

There is a very serious subject that gets a lot of news these days called Human Trafficking. A lot of really good people are donating huge amounts of money to stop this terrible scourge. The problem is that it largely isn’t happening in the United States. It is what is called a Moral Panic.

Most people who are identified as victims of human trafficking were willing prostitutes. The police and FBI report large numbers but nowhere can documentation be found of the problem and those organizations cannot provide much, if any evidence.

Scam artists who claim to be victims take large sums from good-hearted people who desperately want to believe their stories.

This hasn’t stopped charitable organizations collection tens of millions of dollars and police departments having entire task forces built using tens of millions more of your tax dollars.

Case in point is today’s Misleading Headline of the Week which is blaring forth on every news website I monitor.

41 arrested in Tennessee human-trafficking probe

When you get around to reading the story you find that authorities posted ads on a website for underage girls desiring sex and arrested the men who answered the ads.

No one was trafficked. No one.

I understand my opinion on this subject is unpopular. I’ve had a couple of nasty Facebook exchange with proponents of the enormous Super Bowl related issue with human trafficking, which is supported by no evidence.

Just because I say human trafficking largely doesn’t exist in this country and that scammers are stealing huge amounts of money doesn’t mean I support human trafficking. That I don’t think many of the people involved in the efforts to stop this virtually non-existent problem aren’t well-intentioned.

I think people want to be good and this phantom issue gives them a chance to act out on it. They collect money, hold seminars, and fund police departments all in good faith.

The question I ask is if you would support a hundred million dollar, nationwide effort to stamp out the predations of the Tooth Fairy from stealing all those teeth?

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, you win for Misleading Headline of Week.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
Next Release: For the Gray

I just read an interesting story that is generating lots of outrage based on, in my opinion, a misleading headline.

A young woman named Shania Clifford from Scioto, Ohio was the first of her gender to win the SkillsUSA Ohio masonry competition. She was then bumped from the competition as the headline blares: First female teen to win Ohio masonry competition bumped from national contest.

A reading of the story indicates that Clifford actually finished in third place but was given the gold medal because of a transcribing error from the judge’s sheet to the spreadsheet which calculated finishes.

Clifford was not notified but instead the competitor who actually won was told. He then posted the news on his Facebook page and that is how Clifford found out.

The organization certainly failed in a number of ways. The transcribing error was unfortunate but mistakes happen. However, not notifying Clifford of the mistake and explaining in detail what happened was dead wrong. There’s no excuse for that. It’s rude and also gives the impression they are hiding something.

They owe Clifford a much better explanation and I see no reason why they shouldn’t invite her to the finals in any case. But the bottom line is this isn’t sexism, it’s a typo. That is if the explanation for what happened is true. I do think the lack of communication on the part of those who ran the competition has opened them to questions. They should provide the original judges scorecard and the faulty spreadsheet calculations.

Even with that I’m going to call this a misleading headline.

Also, good job, Shania! Keep up the hard work. Even if you don’t get to the finals you’re on your way.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
Next Release: For the Gray

It seems like not a month goes by without a blaring headline citing a recall of hundreds of thousands if not millions of vehicles. I hadn’t really given it much thought until recently but for some reason it finally struck me as serial Misleading Headlines.

The above image is pretty typical of what we see in the frighteningly bold headlines in all these cases. In the past I think my reaction to such news was probably pretty typical of what most people think. Wow! Insert Auto Manufacturer really messed up. This is going to cost them billions of dollars to fix. What a disaster.

I had these thoughts despite having vehicles of my own as part of recalls in the past. We all know the drill and yet we are still impressed with the headline and often click on it.

The reality? There’s no mystery. Everyone who owned that year and make car gets a note. The next time they take it in for service the dealership performs the fix. They do thousands of them, they have the parts on hand, the mechanics replace the part, probably in less than five minutes. The car is back on the road.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the recall actually ends up being profitable. When I take my car in to the dealer to fix a recall issue I usually get my oil changed or some other routine maintenance that I would normally have done a local facility. This means I pay the dealership for the routine maintenance, work if not for the recall they would not have done. The profit on the oil change most likely exceeds the loss on the recall fix.

I’d be willing to bet most people do it the same way.

So, there you go. Serial Misleading Headlines.

What do you think? Am I wrong?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

The latest in my series of misleading headlines is a doozy.

The headline seems to indicate that Antoinette Sullivan went to McDonald’s with friends to lament the fact that she was left at the altar.

Nothing could be further form the truth. Her husband, with whom she has four children, and she got married in the afternoon. He then went off to a paint ball game with his buddies. He had full approval for this and there was no animosity from Antoinette. She met up with her husband and friends later for an evening of fun.

They seem like a fairly nice couple if you read the article. I must believe the writer of the story had no part of the headline.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

A news organization called The Complex had their first entry in my Misleading Headline of the week just this past week but they’ve already topped it with a story this week!

Model Tries to Extort $2,000 From Jaromir Jagr With Post-Sex Selfie, Fails Because He DGAF blares the headline.

I’m very old and I had to think a while on what DGAF meant but eventually I figure it out, Don’t Give a Fuck.

The story involves an 18 year czech model who slept with 43 year old hockey player Jaromir Jagr. The story goes on to detail that she utterly failed in her blackmail attempt because Jagr isn’t married and doesn’t have a girlfriend so he doesn’t care. That she, in fact, has a boyfriend and was the one hurt by her attempt to blackmail him.

The problem is that she had nothing to do with the blackmail attempt. Someone else saw the picture and attempted the blackmail.

I’m willing to believe that The Complex just got the story completely wrong and wasn’t really trying to mislead the readers but the reason they got it wrong is because they didn’t bother to do a little research and that’s why they win my award for a second straight week.

The real problem is that their false story is now being picked up all over the place and the girl is being called all sorts of vile names. That’s just wrong and I want it to stop immediately!

I absolutely think that if an attractive 18 year old girl wants to sleep with a 43 year old hockey player, or, say, a 51 year old writer, more power to her! You go girl!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

Not really a misleading headline more of a stupid one.

Pretty interesting article though. Give it a read.

I’ve got news for your Dr. Headline Writer. An asteroid will hit the earth within the next fourteen days. They are doing so all the time.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition