We’ve been over this before: Headlines carry a lot of weight.
More often than not, they’re the only thing people read. Bogus narratives can spring up from little more than a dishonest and well-placed headline.
And the winner for this week’s trashiest, misleading headline goes to the Hill, which published this gem Thursday: “Ryan: Puerto Rico needs to ‘get back on its own two feet.'”
That seems like a cold thing for the House Speaker to say about the island U.S. territory still battered from a recent hurricane. What a bad headline for an already deeply unpopular GOP – and all on the heels of President Trump tweeting many self-aggrandizing and tone-deaf things about the current situation Puerto Rico.
But wait, let’s see what Rep. Ryan actually said: “There’s a humanitarian crisis that has to be attended to. And this is an area where the federal government has a responsibility, and we’re acting on it…Yes, we need to make sure that Puerto Rico can begin to stand on its own two feet. They’ve already had tough fiscal problems to begin with,” the House Speaker told reporters this week. “We’ve got to do more to help Puerto Rico rebuild its own economy so that it can be self-sufficient.”
His remarks came shortly after the president tweeted, “We cannot keep [Federal Emergency Management Agency], the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”
Ryan’s comments this week on the situation in Puerto Rico clearly don’t mirror what Trump said, but that didn’t stop the Hill from implying otherwise in a headline it has tweeted at least eight times since Thursday.
This is frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is the fact that most of Ryan’s comments are in the Hill’s report. The story’s opening paragraph even reads, “Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that Puerto Rico is facing a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and argued that the federal government has a responsibility to provide personnel and aid to the hurricane-ravaged island territory.”
The problem here is not in the Hill’s reporting, but in its stupid, oft-tweeted headline.
As is the case with these acts of media malpractice, the usual suspects in news and entertainment latched onto the Hill’s especially misleading version of what Ryan said, scrambling to proclaim on social media that the Speaker’s supposed remarks were further proof that the GOP hates poor people and Hispanics.
“Reminder that the main difference between Trump and other Republicans is that he says the quiet part loud,” said columnist Scott Tobias.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who may very well be the most gullible person in political commentary, ran with the Hill headline, tweeting, “Always remember: it’s not just Trump. His warped beliefs are his party’s, too. The only people they recognize as ‘struggling’ are the rich.”
“I want to take the high road. I do. It’s important when the country is so fractured. But fuck you, Paul Ryan. Fuck your cold, dead heart,” said screenwriter Stephen Nathan.
NowThis News’ Matt Saccaro added elsewhere, “I don’t want to hear ‘moderate Republican’ or ‘reasonable Republican’ ever again in my life. All of these people are fucking monsters.”
“GOP probably hoping everyone in Puerto Rico dies so they never have to worry about adding another blue state,” said SB Nation’s Marc Normandin.
If any of them had taken the time to read the damn story, they would have seen that Ryan reiterated that the federal government has a duty and responsibility to restore Puerto Rico.
But reading is apparently hard, and context is harder. Good work, everyone!
