Saturday, 15 August 2009

All wrong mate

Yesterday's front page in the Cairns Post has to win the award for the worst headline ever.

I always cringe when I see a question mark used in a heading.

It's just not right, or should that be... it's just not all white?

3 comments:

Syd Walker said...

It is naff, Mike, but I don't think it's the worst headline ever.

The worst headline ever...?

How about the 1982 headline in The Sun, Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper, after the British Navy sank the General Belgrano, despite the fact that it was outside Britain's unilaterally-imposed 'exclusion zone' and moving away at the time.

The attack caused more than 320 Argentinian deaths but Murdoch's vile Sun newspaper turned it into bloodsport.

It's headline the next day: GOTCHA

Tony Hillier said...

During "Thatcher's War", The Sun also penned the headline: "Stick It Up Your Junta'. This mirrored the message scrawled on an Exocet missile supposedly bound for another Argentinan vessel, viz: "With love from Sun readers".

To my eternal shame, I actually did a few subbing shifts on that scurrilous organ while freelancing in Fleet Street back in the seventies. It certainly opened my eyes to the amoral ways of News Ltd, and "the dirty digger" (as Murdoch was widely known in the "Street of Shame"). It was there that a newspaper executive told me to "never let the facts stand in the way of a good story, son".

Patricia said...

this is a bit rich coming from your years of high quality jurnalism, MM