Reply #4: No, you're not overreacting. I've always thought that headlines are insidious.

[parasim]

They are just like those news "crawls", or whatever they call them, at the bottom of the news casts. The words are read and digested.

For instance, say a newscrawl says "Official Report says Iraq is linked to 9/11..." but maybe the viewer only sees that part before it goes to commercial or whatever. And now imagine the rest of the blurb actually was "Official Report says Iraq is linked to 9/11. Report questioned by Senate Democrats" or something like that. The first sentence sticks in the mind of the viewer, the second, not as necessarily as often.

Another insidous example of media manipulation is when the news shows has a blurb at the bottom of the screen asking a question like "Do the Democrats really hate the troops?" as an obvious attempt to put those words firmly into the mind of the viewer.

Insidious, I say...