Misleading headlines like the example above have been used by the media for over a century to pull viewers, listeners and readers (and for those of you reading this in the twenty-first century, podcasters) in.
That situation changes at midnight tonight with the 'Banner Clangers' Guideline 2007 that, of course, us at the Truthiness HQ have elected to sign up to. The BCG 2007 ruling prevents participating media organisations from publishing or using banner headlines which are misleading or unnecessarily frightening.
Even though the attention grabbing headline policy has been a regular situation for as long as big media's existed the policy went into questionable territory when a rogue, cryptically phrased headline made several thousand readers of the New York Standard Newspaper believe that the US daytime talkshow host, Regis Philbin was to become the New Secretary Of Defence on Tuesday of last week.
As part of our ongoing commitment to quality reporting, The Truthiness Blog will be abiding by this guideline. Since it's a guideline and not a hard and fast rule, we'll do our best, but we can't guarantee anything.
If that's confusing, just think Pirates Of The Carribean and ' more guidelines than actual rules' said by Geoffrey Rush's Captain Barbossa character.
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