Daily Kos

AP headline misleads on terror threat level

Sat Oct 30, 2004 at 02:52:21 PM PDT

An email I just sent to AP:

FAO KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER: U.S. Warns on Terror; Alert Stays Orange

Dear Ms Shrader:

Are you aware that your article just posted on Yahoo News has a misleading title? The title suggests that the country is at Orange Alert level, but in the article itself, you state that:

"Most of the United States has been at code yellow, the midpoint of a five-point color-coded warning scale, for much of the year." And the DHS website says it's yellow.

U.S. Warns on Terror; Alert Stays Orange

As your story is one of the current most popular at Yahoo, I suggest you may wish to edit this title to avoid confusion before a close election, in which raising the threat level has been shown to increase support for one party over another.

Best wishes

Argh, some subeditor saw an opportunity here methinks. If s/he was just not reading the article properly, then worse - this sort of thing shouldn't be messed with.
Update [2004-10-30 19:5:56 by dcr22]:Success! The headline on the feed was just changed to "U.S. Warns on Terror; Alert Unchanged" Another example of how we can help![/UPDATE]

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