There are few attention grabbing titles that can match the article that I have decided to talk about. The link can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/01/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-delay-republicans/index.html and the title is “GOP slaps Obama over Iran talks extension”. Immediately I am taught to think “what? someone slapped the president?!” which of course wasn’t the case. I think that a lot of different perspectives can be taken when looking at this article. The most glaring perspective that you could take when looking at this article would probably be an Agenda setting perspective. This article has agenda setting elements but the elements that make up agenda setting such as priming and framing are in full display when you read the title. We are primed to think that a slap is a physical confrontation and the title is framed on our preconceived notions of what a slap is in order to grab our attention and get us to click on the article. This article wouldn’t have been able to engage the viewers in the same way if the title would’ve have been “GOP upset with Obama over Iran talks extension”. Clearly CNN knew what they were doing when the titled the article they way they did. CNN was trying to grab our attention.
To me I think the most interesting way to look at this article is article is from a fake news perspective. This article is obviously not fake news but the way that the title is worded it is worded in a fake news type of way. We all knew that no one had slapped the president otherwise it would have been major national news. Of course the president wasn’t slapped and so the article takes on a fake news type of title in order to bring in the viewer. This type of story could easily be the headline on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The fake news type of title is effective in grabbing our attention, so even though the story is real the type is eccentric and over the top, much like the way that fake news stories are set up.
I have to say that it always makes me chuckle how the media continously comes up with the eye catching titles for their articles. This just such a title, I totally agree that if someone slapped the president it would certainly be a story worth breaking into our regular scheduled television programming. However the real news would most likely be that the CIA bodygaurds had shot and killed the person who made that terrible mistake. Although we most times in the back of our mind know that most likely a story such as this is not what the headline wants us to beleive it is, we continue to be drawn into the drama created by the media and their quick witted journalists. As long is there is news to cover Americans will be thirsty for drama and the worse the potential outcome of the story, the more we are interested in what it is about.