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| The Saturday (05 April 2014) headline that confused readers. |
Faithful readers of the Chronicle newspaper were last Saturday taken aback when the main headline of the day misrepresented facts.
"When I read this headline I thought maybe the men were fighting over the woman's death," said Nkazi Moyo, a regular reader of the Chronicle.
"Since this was not the case then the woman they were fighting over should demand a correction, " Moyo argued. The headline causing the debate sounded as if the woman the two men were fighting over had died. Truthfulness and factuality were compromised by the headline. It sounded ambiguous to the readers.
"Journalists have to do whatever it takes to keep the business afloat. They should however focus on other areas too," Fanoe Riz Ngwenya commented. Apart from making sales, journalists are saddled with the responsibility to cross check facts, work on the grammatical errors of their work to avoid taking stories out of context.
On another note, many followers of the Chronicle now feel that the newspaper is going tabloid, leading with sex scandals to maximise sales, because research has shown that sex sells.
I think going tabloid is very very important in our day when the media is so much of a commercial venture. Don't you think?
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