Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, mistakes happen easily in the media business and we know that as well as anyone.
While acutely aware of the adage that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, however, every now and again, an error appears that’s so spectacular that one can’t help but draw attention to it.
In the newspaper industry, once something is gone to print, it’s very difficult to retract, which is why we’re sure there were some folks at the Truro Daily News in Nova Scotia in Canada who looked on with horror at the front page greeting them on Monday morning.
Located just below a story on the front page relating to a 17-year old man charged with second-degree murder were two pictures of a man whose face was covered with something that bore more than a slight resemblance to blood.
https://twitter.com/NightTimePod/status/900015946584260608
As it turns out, the man in question was merely stuffing his face as a contestant in the pie-eating contest at the Wild Blueberry Harvest Festival and not, as the juxtaposition of headline and image might suggest, the victim of the second-degree murder referenced in the headline.
Look a little further down the page and you’ll see that the festival and the images had their own headline, ‘Into the Blue’, but at that stage, plenty of readers will already have mistakenly connected it to the rather more sinister headline above.
The front page is definitely one to be framed and put on the mantelpiece for the subject of the photo, Chris, especially if he ever wants to give the grandkids a little scare at bedtime.
