Clickbait Taking Over "Journalism"

Foolmewunz

Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Foolmewunz
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I think there was a REAL FAKE NEWS thread somewhere but damned if I can find it.

I've noticed a trend in CNN's headlines for over a year. They'll intentionally leave off a key word and post a clickable lead/headline that reads, say, "President Hiding Serious Illness" and you click it. How many of us would've clicked "President of Slobovistan Admits Suffering from Alopecia"?

Leaving key elements out of a lead is an old favorite device. "Devastating Crash Kills Seven - tape at 11" is sort of common. When it turns out that the "seven" is a family of ducks, we all kick ourselves for falling for it, yet again.

Today, though, I ran across something where not just the headline but the entire thrust of the article is dishonest.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/24/europe/german-court-hangover-disease-wellness-trnd/index.html

The clickbait read: A German Court Ruled That Hangovers Are An Illness

The headline read(still reads as of this writing): Rejoice, booze lovers. A German court ruled that hangovers are an illness

The actual story is not slightly but quite different. In an effort to stop a not-really-medicine-but-it-works campaign to sell a hangover "cure", they ruled that a hangover is a form of illness and making spurious claims about medical efficacy is illegal.

The headlines are spinning it into a formal go ahead to claim your hangover as a "sick day" or "excused absence". The court made no such declaration and an incidental line in a single case in a German trial is far from "scientific proof".

Tempest in a teapot, I know, but it just irked the crap out of me and I felt like venting and you, poor baby, are the one who got to listen to my rantings.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Tempest in a teapot, I know, but it just irked the crap out of me and I felt like venting and you, poor baby, are the one who got to listen to my rantings.
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Me too! I hate headlines like, 'Tap water polluted in major Danish town,' especially when it would have been much shorter if they'd just written the name of the bloody town. Or 'World-famous guitarist dies.' Clapton would have been shorter and to the point, but they are usually about guys I never even heard of. (And before I start any rumors, I think he's still alive.)
But the clickbait industry seems to be evolving. Apparently, people have stopped falling for, 'You'll never believe who ...' headlines.
 
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Don't kid yourself, the news business has always been business first and journalism second. "Remember the Maine!" headlines made Hearst a wealthy man.
 
Brainster said:
Don't kid yourself, the news business has always been business first and journalism second. "Remember the Maine!" headlines made Hearst a wealthy man.
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Not the same thing, but yeah, "Baby Dead!" sold a lot of papers. That's just manipulation and we've actually got it pretty good in the USA and Canada, when you see the slanted (ideologically) journalism of many countries. US papers at least used to try to keep their opinions to the opinions pages. CNN was supposed to be the soft media version of that standard. When they realized a few years ago that keeping up a full slate of actual newswriters and reporters was going to put them into bankruptcy court they turned to wire services more and more, but they also reverted to worse models for presentation. The whole bottom half of the home page is now recycled articles from weeks and even months ago and paid content, barely discernible from their own links to CNN content.

That just seemed to be a price being paid and I adjusted. I realized that I really don't give a crap about who is or isn't buying or selling what on "Mansion Global" so Kylie Jenner is a thing of the past.

But clickbait in their own reporting is just a hustle. I kinda expected more of them. I learned to not click the "President's Resignation Demanded" to have to find out what's going on in whatever country that's referring to. But the hangover story pissed me off more because the entire story is based on stupid throwaway comments by a talking head. I assume the video is some sub-network they're a part of? It shows up semi-often.
 
Foolmewunz said:
CNN content.

But clickbait in their own reporting is just a hustle. I kinda expected more of them. I learned to not click the "President's Resignation Demanded" to have to find out what's going on in whatever country that's referring to. But the hangover story pissed me off more because the entire story is based on stupid throwaway comments by a talking head. I assume the video is some sub-network they're a part of? It shows up semi-often.
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I consider myself extremely fortunate in having had for 30 years a chance to ethically inform my community and even a few times affect the national conversation. But the rules changed drastically with the rise of the Internet and I see why. It became a kind of arms war, seeing who could write the most titillating headlines in order to keep people on the site and thus keep ad revenues up.

There's a way to do that without cheating readers. And gradually we catch on and become more skeptical. We're still in the infancy of online news gathering and presentations.

I eschew most "sponsored content" and dip into a few sites with different points of view. The BBC, Al Jazeera, the AP, Reuters ... not perfect sites but at least something to balance out the frivolity of so much U.S. news. With the wanna-be school shooter I chose Fox for breaking news to see how it would be presented and how 2A activists would respond. I mine WaPo, the NYT and CNN for facts, but guardedly. The WSJ when I can get past the paywall. CNN analysts have been predicting the imminent demise of Trump for 3+ years now and they've been wrong every time. I don't like to hear only what I like to hear.

Also spend a fair amount of time on The Economist and The New Yorker. I might then triangulate that with conservative media - the National Review is sometimes a source. But no apologies for staying away from the snarkier sites whether left or right.
 
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I have the solution to all your news problems! It's One Weird Trick They Don't Want You To Know!! Click HERE!!!
 
TragicMonkey said:
I have the solution to all your news problems! It's One Weird Trick They Don't Want You To Know!! Click HERE!!!
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FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
 
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I'm always amused with those that they to insert where they think you are into the "articles" (used to be known as adverts):

1000s of people in Riverdale are buying this funeral plan.

Especially when I am using a VPN and it comes back with

1000s of people in !****?? are buying this funeral plan.
 
dann said:
FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
Click to expand...
That's because no one
 
dann said:
FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
Click to expand...
would be that daft
 
dann said:
FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
Click to expand...
Or evil.
 
I love the click-bait things that pop up on various sites..

“Top Gut Doctor Urges You To Quit These Three Foods!”

“Gut doctor”?

“Doc, how do you make your diagnosis?”
“Oh, I just go with my gut.....”
 
dann said:
FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
Click to expand...

I hate those most of all. It seems each page loads a little slower, and the ads keep moving so when you think you've clicked "NEXT" you've actually clicked a generic Viagra link, because 95% of those ads are always for some kind of dick troubles, but you don't know you've clicked the wrong button until the dick trouble ad has popped up completely. Man, I hate those.
 
Every so often I see a link for some new product that sounds interesting. Clicking reveals a video that has a different advertisement as its opening. I click it off as soon as I recognize that, and never get to see the intended video. I don't even want to give them five seconds of my time because I lose my train of thought. But I suppose they got their "hit" anyway.
 
Mike! said:
I hate those most of all. It seems each page loads a little slower, and the ads keep moving so when you think you've clicked "NEXT" you've actually clicked a generic Viagra link, because 95% of those ads are always for some kind of dick troubles, but you don't know you've clicked the wrong button until the dick trouble ad has popped up completely. Man, I hate those.
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I believe those ads can be targeted based upon your search history. :duck:
 
They often can, but most people probably hate dick trouble ads almost as much as dick trouble! :)
 
Foolmewunz said:
I think there was a REAL FAKE NEWS thread somewhere but damned if I can find it.

I've noticed a trend in CNN's headlines for over a year. They'll intentionally leave off a key word and post a clickable lead/headline that reads, say, "President Hiding Serious Illness" and you click it. How many of us would've clicked "President of Slobovistan Admits Suffering from Alopecia"?

Leaving key elements out of a lead is an old favorite device. "Devastating Crash Kills Seven - tape at 11" is sort of common. When it turns out that the "seven" is a family of ducks, we all kick ourselves for falling for it, yet again.

Today, though, I ran across something where not just the headline but the entire thrust of the article is dishonest.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/24/europe/german-court-hangover-disease-wellness-trnd/index.html

The clickbait read: A German Court Ruled That Hangovers Are An Illness

The headline read(still reads as of this writing): Rejoice, booze lovers. A German court ruled that hangovers are an illness

The actual story is not slightly but quite different. In an effort to stop a not-really-medicine-but-it-works campaign to sell a hangover "cure", they ruled that a hangover is a form of illness and making spurious claims about medical efficacy is illegal.

The headlines are spinning it into a formal go ahead to claim your hangover as a "sick day" or "excused absence". The court made no such declaration and an incidental line in a single case in a German trial is far from "scientific proof".

Tempest in a teapot, I know, but it just irked the crap out of me and I felt like venting and you, poor baby, are the one who got to listen to my rantings.
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yesterday a walrus attack and sunk a russian navy boat, post-clickbait.... an inflatable zodiac style raft, left that part out.

This ran with a few different major sources, CNN, FOX, etc
 
rockysmith76 said:
yesterday a walrus attack and sunk a russian navy boat, post-clickbait.... an inflatable zodiac style raft, left that part out.

This ran with a few different major sources, CNN, FOX, etc
Click to expand...

I like to read those headlines and make up my own story. In my version a walrus strike team fired rocket launchers from the shore, hitting an aircraft carrier below the waterline.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I like to read those headlines and make up my own story. In my version a walrus strike team fired rocket launchers from the shore, hitting an aircraft carrier below the waterline.
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I didn't think the russian navy had any operable carriers.
 
ponderingturtle said:
I didn't think the russian navy had any operable carriers.
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Of course they don't, they keep getting sunk by walruses. That's the tenth one this year. Soon Russia will abandon its coastline and retreat inward to its steamy jungles, leaving the abandoned territory to the walruses. Their last hope was that whale spy of theirs, but his cover was blown before he could infiltrate the walrus command. They're Putin on sad faces in Russia now, nothing to be Vlad about there.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Of course they don't, they keep getting sunk by walruses. That's the tenth one this year. Soon Russia will abandon its coastline and retreat inward to its steamy jungles, leaving the abandoned territory to the walruses. Their last hope was that whale spy of theirs, but his cover was blown before he could infiltrate the walrus command. They're Putin on sad faces in Russia now, nothing to be Vlad about there.
Click to expand...

They have one and it was damaged when its dry dock sank. Clearly the walrus's involvement involves complex plans, not only is it out of commission but so are the repair facilities they would need!
 
dann said:
FTFY.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the trick where you divide an ordinary-length article into several very short ones so you have to click ten times to read it all, thus exposing yourself to ten times more advertising! NEXT.
Click to expand...

Oh yes. On the rare occasions when I allow myself to be clickbaited into "sponsored content" I hate that type of formatting. Not only do you have to click through 786 "pages" consisting of one or two paragraphs of the story, usually written so that you don't get to the actual point of the "story" (if there even is one) until page 786, the link to the next page is always buried among all the advertiser links, so that if you're not paying attention, you end up clicking the advertiser link. It's quite rare any more that I click on one of those things, and even rarer that I don't regret clicking on it when I do.
 
Foolmewunz said:
I think there was a REAL FAKE NEWS thread somewhere but damned if I can find it.

I've noticed a trend in CNN's headlines for over a year. They'll intentionally leave off a key word and post a clickable lead/headline that reads, say, "President Hiding Serious Illness" and you click it. How many of us would've clicked "President of Slobovistan Admits Suffering from Alopecia"?

Leaving key elements out of a lead is an old favorite device. "Devastating Crash Kills Seven - tape at 11" is sort of common. When it turns out that the "seven" is a family of ducks, we all kick ourselves for falling for it, yet again.

Today, though, I ran across something where not just the headline but the entire thrust of the article is dishonest.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/24/europe/german-court-hangover-disease-wellness-trnd/index.html

The clickbait read: A German Court Ruled That Hangovers Are An Illness

The headline read(still reads as of this writing): Rejoice, booze lovers. A German court ruled that hangovers are an illness

The actual story is not slightly but quite different. In an effort to stop a not-really-medicine-but-it-works campaign to sell a hangover "cure", they ruled that a hangover is a form of illness and making spurious claims about medical efficacy is illegal.

The headlines are spinning it into a formal go ahead to claim your hangover as a "sick day" or "excused absence". The court made no such declaration and an incidental line in a single case in a German trial is far from "scientific proof".

Tempest in a teapot, I know, but it just irked the crap out of me and I felt like venting and you, poor baby, are the one who got to listen to my rantings.
Click to expand...

Actually I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's always nice when someone comes around to realizing that the mainstream media is not their friend.
 
theprestige said:
Actually I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's always nice when someone comes around to realizing that the mainstream media is not their friend.
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You keep saying this as though it's a brilliant new revelation. And since you addressed it to my post, I can safely tell you that it's condescending in the vein of TBD's faux condescension.

"When someone comes around...."????? I've been a child of the counter culture for nearly six decades. I've often pointed out the absurdity of the Great Right Wing Noise Machine calling the MSM "left-wing". Mainstream is status quo is establishment is conservative. That should be pretty apparent.

I'm not talking about whether their opinions from on high can be trusted but whether their simple reporting has gone the route of yellow journalism in its modern version - clickbait. This is a nothing story but slightly interesting. A clueless talking head on a "features" channel and a reporter that stupidly fell for the angle tried to make it into some kind of "legal precedent" for winos to take days off. It has just about the same legal standing as the legal shenanigans in Miracle on 34th Street... "See the Post Office agrees, case closed." German workers don't need legal excuses to take a sick day. They have some of the most liberal working laws in the world.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Mainstream is status quo is establishment is conservative. That should be pretty apparent.
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It is not apparent to the conservatives who think that there are good people at Nazi rallies, but it is pretty obvious to everybody else.
 
dann said:
It is not apparent to the conservatives who think that there are good people at Nazi rallies, but it is pretty obvious to everybody else.
Click to expand...

Yep. Someone linked earlier to an expose of sorts. The NYT interviewed a half-dozen "swing voters" who were coming down against impeachment. They aren't swing voters at all, other than that they're in swing states and that they primp to get interviewed. One of them has attended twenty-three (23!) Trump rallies and still claims to be an independent. Another one has a pic of Robert E. Lee on his wall!

https://www.thewrap.com/ny-times-un...ame-trump-supporters-instead-of-swing-voters/
 
I was thinking about this (maybe not too deeply) but aren't the consumers of news ultimately to blame for the kind of news that the media focuses on? If more people click on stories that promise to show you a picture of Kim Kardashian's butt than stories about the war in Yemen, then in the long run the media will have to devote fewer resources to covering serious news and more to covering the things that people actually want to consume.
 
I’ve noticed recently that Clickbait has maybe reached a new level of ridiculousness.

One link said “This video will soon be banned. Watch before it’s deleted.” The thumbnail was just a picture of a woman sitting in a car. No hint as to what the video is about. Of course I don’t click on links like that because I already know that whatever it is, it’s just a waste of my time and attention. In another one, a YouTube video was just titled “Please watch this.” The thumbnail was just the word “Wow.”

Again, I ignored it. But I think this is the new trend in Clickbait. Mystery content. Not even a hint of what it might be.
 
Puppycow said:
I was thinking about this (maybe not too deeply) but aren't the consumers of news ultimately to blame for the kind of news that the media focuses on? If more people click on stories that promise to show you a picture of Kim Kardashian's butt than stories about the war in Yemen, then in the long run the media will have to devote fewer resources to covering serious news and more to covering the things that people actually want to consume.
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I'd say no. The news chooses to pimp itself out for more money.

If you agree that more people are interested in the crude base subjects than in more refined ones, than "more clicks" are already expected regarding KK's butt. It's a given, like more people consume Pepsi than champagne.

The problem as you present it is journalists saying "but I don't care about journalistic integrity! I just wanna be rich and popular!" To which I would retort "then why didn't your dumb ass get into investment or finance? That's where the money is, not in being a freaking column writer. As ye sow, bitch".
 
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For a while I was getting a lot of ads for clickbait on YouTube. I kept reporting them. They've almost entirely stopped. I'd like to think I made a difference, but more likely YouTube just isn't sending them to me but everyone else still gets them.
 
The thing is I have to admit it takes willpower for me not to click on a lot of it - not because I believe the clickbait itself but to see what they are trying to flog me via the clickbait headline!
 
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