A Rant about headline writers

Ordinarily, I'd address my criticism to the mainstr+eam media who do this, but today it's happened at the definitely not mainstream "Raw Story." Once again, a headline writer shows that he/she has had his/her head up his/her whatever. The headline on the following story at Raw Story is "Pelosi Backtracks: Dems will not cut off funding for war." The story reads as follows:

Pelosi: Dems will not cut off Iraq funding

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday Democrats will not cut off funding for the war in Iraq, despite indicating earlier that she will not give President Bush a "blank check" to fund a U.S. troop surge in the war-torn country.

"I'm going to be very clear: Democrats will not cut off funding for our troops," Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. "But the president needs to know -- and that's what I was telling him yesterday -- ... that congressional oversight is alive and well."

On CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Pelosi said, "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions."

Which is an EXACT quotation of what she said on the air yesterday (Sunday) -- the very statement that led to headlines saying Pelosi planned to use the purse strings as a tool to try to stop the escalation. For anyone to call this a "backtrack" is idiotic. Obviously, the headline writer had not read what Pelosi said on Sunday and had only read the headlines saying she was going to use the purse strings to fight the escalation -- if he/she/it read anything at all. Nor did the headline writer have enough sense to understand the implications of what Pelosi said.

I'm sick of these kinds of headlines, written by the ignorami. They appear constantly in places like the NY Times, the Washington Post, etc. And, for those of us who like to scan the news quickly to get the gist of it, they can be very misleading.

End of rant