and finally... Lies, damned lies and headlines


Chris Proctor takes on misleading messages


T


he most breathtaking porky pie I know is the one that ‘the camera never lies’. Photographs ceaselessly distort and deceive – especially those by estate agents.


I’ve visited a few houses recently where I’ve


marvelled at the disparity between the agent’s blurb and the house’s qualities. Size is distorted like candyfloss at the event horizon of a black hole. Rooms that the agent’s photographs show stretching towards a distant horizon are, in reality, insufficient for cat swinging. Best was the two-bed flat we saw that, as far as we could ascertain, had just the one sleeping chamber. Upon enquiry the agent announced that that particular bedroom was currently in use as a sitting room. And the sitting room? I asked. Was that contemporaneously employed as a garden? I don’t understand why they lie. If they’re going to get found out – and they are – they may as well tell the truth. It doesn’t matter how impressive an image you capture – when punters turn up they can see how big a flat is. They’re not going to be more convinced by the photograph than the reality. Headlines are a bit like that, too. There’s no point in bigging up a story with a flash header if the report is a load of twaddle. The only exception is if you’re confident that readers won’t bother to read past the headline.


I saw a Metro header the other day that rather cheered me up. “High-Speed Rail ‘For Whole UK’”, it said. That sounded good. Then I examined the body of the article.


The real story was that a transport lobbying firm


had come up with a report arguing the case for more high-speed trains and that the government had told them to pop off. Greengauge 21 said if we built 101 extra miles of high-speed track linking cities such as Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle and Edinburgh, all kinds of nice things would happen and we’d all sing and dance. The trouble, revealed reluctantly in an inside page, was that the Department for Transport said it disagreed. So it wasn’t a ‘new proposal’ but an optimistic punt. All of a sudden, nothing was going to happen.


On the same (slow) day, the BBC news led on a


health scare story, which is always good for business. ‘Medics Who Saved Skripals Reveal Fears’ the header declared. Oh dear! What now? More outbreaks? A contamination? An epidemic of nervy Russky agents? Not entirely. It seems that the gripping news was that some doctors weren’t sure how best to treat the double agent and his daughter when they arrived in hospital on 4 March, almost three months before the Beeb’s report. It wasn’t even sold as delayed reaction fear. But if you are trying to grab attention, I suppose ‘Man Was Apprehensive Three Months Ago’ isn’t going to set the heart racing. I can see why they did it. On the other hand, it is possible to reveal too


much, as with the magazine thrust upon me by one of those mega-serious, goggle-eyed, utterly committed people I always try to avoid at political meetings. One wriggled up to me undetected in Bolivar Hall. Would I like to purchase a copy of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review? Obviously not – but then my eyes fell upon the main header: ‘Gruesome Butchery of Besieged and Unarmed Gaza Palestinians by the Artificial Nazi-Jewish State of Israel’. Well, I thought, this seems an opportunity to peruse a balanced and objective assessment of the Middle East conflict. Unlike the more popular press, from a first glimpse I knew what the story was about: and I am happy to say the copy did not disappoint. Stacks of ‘US- dominated world imperialism’, generous helpings of ‘expansionism and terror’, the applause inducing ‘toad-like squatting of the fascist-colonists on the land of oppressed millions’ and a condemnation of miserable philistine petty-bourgeois Kautskyites. There was only one photograph among the


interminable pages of zero-leaded seven-point type, and I am sorry to say I found it disheartening. I had hoped for more. It showed a chap with a bad leg on a stretcher who seemed in far finer fettle than some footballers I’ve seen assisted from the field. It’s my guess that few adherents of the EPSR publication are estate agents, even fewer are photographers and none are subs.


26 | theJournalist


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