Newspapers are infamous for often writing headlines which don’t match or contradict the ensuing article. The Erie Times-News and the Associated Press trumped that anomaly today by putting together both a headline and a lede paragraph which said just the opposite of the rest of the story.
It exemplifies the folly I discussed in my Nov. 15 post entitled "The news media and gas prices: a self-fulling prophecy" which dealt with news media's attempts to predict the news, rather than simply reporting it.
The headline written by a Times-News rim rat over the AP story reads: “Gas prices fall in Erie, but another rise may be ahead.” The head was virtually echoed by the lede paragraph, written by the AP, which reads: “Gas prices in Erie fell to as (sic) low as $3.09 yesterday, but the low cost may be short-lived.” ( I sicced the preceding sentence because the bizarre syntactical construction “to as” is, to say the least, a superfluous redundancy.” Either “fell to $3.09,” or “as low as $3.09” would suffice).
The article then went on to say: “The Associated Press is reporting a surge in oil prices after a fire broke out late Wednesday at a pipeline carrying crude oil from Canada to the Midwest. The fire in northern Minnesota killed two workers and resulted in the shutdown of five pipelines, sparking concerns that supplies could be interrupted.”
The preceding paragraph would appear to be heading in the direction of the sense of the headline and the lede. But the very next paragraph clearly limns the inherent contradiction. It reads:
"A spokeswoman for owner Enbridge Energy told the AP that (sloppy writing here: “that” is redundant) the company has oil stored along the line and at refineries, the pipelines could be closed for several days without disrupting the flow of supply (my emphasis).
Hence, it's illogical to assume, as the Times-News and the AP falsely did, that lower prices would rise again based upon the information provided. Just the facts, please.
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