CNN Sells T-Shirts With Headlines
This is going to be short.
Since April CNN has been selling t-shirts with some of their “lighter” headlines on them, followed by “I just saw it on CNN.com” and the date. But who decides which headlines aren’t about serious subjects, and are therefore okay to make light of? I wonder if the “Size 4 Teen Model [who was] Called too ‘Obese’” or people who “Can’t Make [it too a] Funeral [and] Catch it on Web” are happy about their stories being used as taglines to promote CNN’s website. I mean it’s a brilliant marketing technique, but it is it really ok to do?
Of course a “headline” has always been a tagline to sell papers, news shows, magazines, etc. But in those cases the stories are right there along with the headline to give a (hopefully) fairer and less sensational view of the story. Although, in the case of these kinds of headlines, are they really reporting important information that people should know, or are they just making fun of people? Does the fact that these headlines ends up on t-shirts answer that question for us? Which leads to the even broader question of whether teasing people is really a valid activity for a serious news outlet to engage in.
nice article.
Lots of valid questions being asked here. I wonder how many people who were part of those headlines bought shirts because they were involved. I know if there was a headline that said “Freak October Storm Wreaks Havoc in Buffalo”, there’d be a few people here to buy one.
Not sure if teasing is the right word, it feels more like exploitation to me.