The Art Of Distortion

A headline on www.IBNLive.COM last week read thus: Virender Sehwag angry at being dropped?

Sehwag is angry? Sounds pretty serious. So what did Sehwag say or do to express his anger?

I couldn’t resist and clicked the link to be redirected to IBNLive’s Cricket section, CricketNext. The story began by saying – “MS Dhoni had reportedly requested Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan to sit out of India’s World Twenty20 match against England to test the team’s bench strength, but if reports are to be believed, it hasn’t gone down too well with Sehwag”.

As you can see, CricketNext, while admitting to not being too sure about believing in the report it quotes, reported that Sehwag was ANGRY. Maybe this element of doubt in that original report was what caused CricketNext to add that question-mark at the end of the headline.

Mind you, the headline was not “Virender Sehwag angry at being dropped!”

CricketNext seemed perplexed, “Virender Sehwag angry at being dropped?”

The original report had come from www.firstpost.com which was credited in CricketNext’s article but without a hyperlink. One didn’t have to dig too deep to find that original article. Thanks to google, I reached the Firstpost article written by cricket writer, Ashish Magotra.

The problem is: the article suggested that Sehwag was sulking. It was titled “Sulking won’t help Sehwag, impressing in the nets will”. And guess what, it was more an opinion piece than a report.

The article was based on observing the Indian cricket team during a practice session at Colombo on September 26, 2012. It suggested that:

“The first man into the team bus today morning was Virender Sehwag.”

“After warming-up with the team, he sat in the last row of the team tent at the Colts Cricket Club in Colombo.”

“…didn’t move from his chair till the end of the session…”

That’s it. These three events – accurate enough in themselves – are the basis for a headline claiming that one of India’s top-ranked players is sulking. I am not an expert on Sehwag’s behaviour, so I cannot comment on the conclusions drawn by Sehwag-watchers like Ashish Magotra.

But CricketNext’s translation of sulkiness into anger is akin to translating peaceful protests to riots and revolts. Without the headline, the story couldn’t have made it to the featured section on IBNLive.com. You have to wonder whether this sort of blatant distortion helps IBNLive’s mission to “serve robust and high quality news from every corner of India”.

This is not an isolated example. Every day, there are numerous such distorted headlines on a wider range of topics, published on not just IBNLive.com but other similar news outlets as well. And the best part is, you only have to scan the homepage: most headlines that grab your attention are distorted in one way or the other. It is such distortion that tends to incite rather than inform the readers. In closing, I sincerely hope my Sehwag-worshipping-cousin reads my article before locking himself up in the toilet in anger over the report that Sehwag is sulking.

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