Media Bias - The Seattle Times Is At It Again

As I’ve said many times before, most people get their news and form their opinions based on newspaper headlines because they are either too busy or too lazy to read the articles. Because of this phenomenon, the people who create headlines can greatly influence public opinion.

Case in point:

Today’s Seattle Times has a front-page article about the execution of Saddam Hussein that once again illustrates the paper’s bias. The headline for this article is:

“Saddam defiant to the very end”

The sub-headline is:

“‘I am not afraid. I have chosen this path.’ Standing at the gallows with a noose around his neck, the former dictator comes face to face with today’s Iraq.”

Regardless of what the article says, the headline has created two images in the reader’s mind:

1) An image of a strong, heroic Saddam Hussein.

2) An image that “today’s Iraq” is a nation that puts nooses around people’s necks.

The Seattle Times had a choice when creating the headline. The headline could have been:

“Hussein Executed for Shiite Massacre”

with a sub-headline of

“The end of a dark chapter in Iraq’s history”.

It could have been anything. Yet the Seattle Times chose “Saddam defiant to the very end”.

Also, we know the Seattle Times created their own headline. The article was written by Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post. The headline for the same article in the Washington Post is:

“In Hussein’s Last Minutes, Jeers and a Cry for Calm”

The question readers should ask themselves is, “Why did the Seattle Times choose their particular headline?”