Here at MKC Communications, we are often asked by our clients why sometimes the headline on an article bears no relation to its content.
A prime example is in today’s Irish Examiner – a newspaper which is fought over by sections of this office as certain Munster people grab it to read its sports section.
The rather dramatic headline on a news article on page 7 reads: “Hoffman saves jogger who had cardiac arrest”.

Reading the article, it quickly becomes clear that Dustin Hoffman (for it was he) actually did no such thing.
According to John Fahey’s article, Mr. Hoffman was walking in Central Park, saw a jogger fall to the ground and “waited with the stricken lawyer until he was resuscitated and rushed to hospital”.
Did Dustin Hoffman actually perform the CPR on the jogger? No, that was the “three ambulance crews present”. Maybe Dustin rang for the ambulance crews? Erm, no, not that either. Apparently, “control has since been back through the calls and it was someone else who called the ambulance”.
Being cynical about it (cynical, moi?), all the actor did was stand around gawking (or in the words of the article, wait around 15 minutes because he was “very concerned”) until the poor man was rushed off to hospital. Oh, but he did congratulate the ambulance crews afterwards on doing a great job!
So, all this begs the question, did the sub-editor (the guy who actually writes the headlines after a journalist submits copy) actually read the article? True, ‘Hoffman congratulates ambulance crews for saving jogger’s life’ isn’t as catchy, and why let accuracy stand in the way of a good headline anyway?
In this instance no harm was done, but regularly we see damaging headlines which in no way reflect the content of the balanced article below it.
In this age of speed reading, where increasingly our brains are trained to scan headlines, surely greater accuracy in headlines would do a better service to the work of journalists and the people and companies they are writing about.










