Reading Past the Headline Habit
Launch library · evergreen read
A headline is written first and foremost to earn a click above almost everything else on the page, which means it is often optimised for intrigue rather than complete accuracy. Reading only the headline, then forming a firm opinion based on it alone, skips the part of the process where nuance and detail usually genuinely live.
Building the habit of reading past a headline does not require reading everything in full, exhaustive detail every time, but it does mean pausing before treating a headline as a complete summary of whatever it is describing, since headlines are built to compress and often to deliberately provoke a reaction.
This habit becomes especially important for anything prompting a strong immediate reaction in the reader, since headlines engineered for maximum intrigue are often the ones furthest from a fair, complete picture of whatever they happen to be summarising for whoever reads them quickly and moves on.