The Expression of Bias in (Online) Newspaper Headlines

This chapter discusses the expression of bias in news headlines as a possible vehicle for the codification of partial truths, tainted truths, or untruths, either as forms of involuntary misinformation or conscious disinformation. Headlines, in fact, are resources meant to point to the content of the ensuing news article in a way that is concise and appealing. As such, they are important textual resources, in that they provide cues concerning the content (performing an informative function) and the angle through which the content is going to be construed (carrying out a framing function), and they also, very commonly, contain attractors (unexpected and impactful formulations) to stimulate the readers’ interest and encourage them to read the associated text it in full. At the same time, due to the distinctive brevity of the genre, which requires processes of content simplification (namely, through deletion, distortion, and generalisation), headlines are also important resources for conveying forms of bias. In fact, the operation of word choice and content simplification is likely to favour given understandings over others, by prioritising and conferring interpretive relevance to specific elements of information, thus potentially contributing to positing or reinforcing specific worldviews, and concealing concurrent ones. On this basis, this analysis investigates the ways in which bias may be codified in the formulation of headlines in US media outlets when reporting specific current affairs.