Wednesday 17 September 2014

SHOCKER! Innocuous Bony comments lead to ridiculous headlines in media

Bony says he's happy and focused on Swansea - clearly the natural thing to do is to write an article with a headline which intimates the opposite!


Ah, the media. Sometimes excellent, sometimes horrific. Depending on which outlets you peruse, then granted, the quality of journalism will vary accordingly, but the thing that always really gets my goat is certain publications' desire to obviously twist a headline as suits them. This one today from the Daily Express is what particularly got my goat, see if you agree:

Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham £19m target Wilfried Bony CONFIRMS interest

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/511949/Liverpool-Arsenal-and-Tottenham-19m-target-CONFIRMS-interest

If you clicked the article you'll see they immediately point out that this interest was during the transfer window, and that he was talking in the past tense. Would you have got that from the headline though? I'd say the implication from any headline which says "Footballer CONFIRMS interest" would be that this is something which is ongoing - I know that's reading between the lines but seeing as there's no explanation in the headline that's the only option you've got. Here are Bony's comments, so you can decide whether the headline is fair or not:

"Now it's over. Before we were talking, but now it's over so I have to focus on the team. There were some chances, but nothing concrete. I waited and nothing happened so now I am just focused on the team. My head is okay. I just want to repeat or do better than last season.

"We can see from the games I played that the speculation didn't affect me. I think I have started better than last season. The goals are not coming, but the team is playing well. I'm not affected and the goals will come."

"The goals are not on my mind. It will come. I'm quite prepared for that. The most important thing is that the team is doing well. I'm not affected by the lack of goals. Sometimes a player can score in two or three games, but then he can miss for five games. This is the way football works."
 
http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Wilfried-Bony-focused-Swansea-City-leaving-goals/story-22935668-detail/story.html#ixzz3DaDhxG8d

Perhaps I'm overly cynical but that was my reaction anyway. If I see that headline I assume it's an ongoing issue, and that the comments aren't referring to something which happened/was happening a while ago.


In fairness, reports of these comments by Bony with headlines such as the one seen in the Express are in the minority, and most took the more sensible: "Bony focused on Swansea" line. The problem is though when a paper with weight behind it (such as the Express) posts an article like this it breeds more. Copycat articles have cropped up on sites like "The Sport Review" (link) & Give Me Sport (link), with the latter going as far as to claim that this is reason enough for Arsenal to "resume Bony chase". 

This is, sadly, part and parcel of online media these days. There's a term - "Clickbait" - which indicates an article wants you to click to find out more, as opposed to the days gone by where headlines were normally, in the British media anyway, snappy puns. I'll admit to engaging in this myself - by omitting a player's name, perhaps, and referring to him as "Swansea midfielder" instead, in order that people click to find out what I'm on about. I draw the line though at deliberately wording a headline in a manner which doesn't, in my opinion, represent the content in the article.