Saving face

Often a headline over a story, column or article can subtley misrepresent the thrust of the written piece that follows. Sometimes it’s coincidental, sometimes deliberate.

There’s a good example of the latter in the headline over a letter to the editor submitted by Lou Porreco, president of the Erie Municipal Airport Authority published Saturday.

In his letter, Porreco pointed out a striking inconsistency in how the Times-News has handled its coverage of the debate over the $75,000 bonus the authority promised Airport Director Kelly Fredericks as an incentive to complete the construction of the controversial airport runway extension in a timely manner.

Porreco notes that between an editorial published October 12 and two others written way back on June 29 and April 18, the newspaper did a 180, from supporting the bonus early on, to questioning more recently its value as an incentive for Fredericks to oversee the completion of the job by 2011.

Could these contradictory positions have been sanctioned by the same editors? Porreco wants to know. He said the newspaper’s early support of the bonus made negotiations with Fredericks more difficult, rendering the newspaper’s recent vacillation to the contrary puzzling.

My point here is not to amplify the contradictions in the Times-News’s shifting editorial positions. Porreco’s letter did an excellent job of that. My purpose is simply to highlight the inappropriateness of the mealy-mouthed headline placed over Porreco’s letter by some faceless copy editor and approved by his or her bosses.

It reads: “Authority defends Fredericks’ $75,000 bonus,” making it appear as though the thrust of Porreco’s letter was to defend the bonus, when in fact it was primarily to highlight the newspaper’s baffling inconsistency with respect to it,and which the phony face-saving headline seeks unsuccessfuly to diminish.