The Top Headline Tricks

Watch for these patterns:

• Emotional amplification — "devastating" results that are actually modest
• Missing context — "crime rises 50%" (from 2 incidents to 3 in a small town)
• Correlation as causation — "coffee linked to longer life" (correlation only)
• Fear-baiting questions — "Is your phone killing you?" (the question plants the fear)
• Cherry-picked quotes — a line pulled out of context to imply the opposite of what was said

The question trick even has a name: Betteridge's Law, which says any headline ending in a question mark can be answered "no."