Sharks, The Mossad and The Scotsman Make for Sexy Headlines

UPDATE 1:55 pm: See HonestReporting UK’s response to the Scotsman:

Egyptian Shark Attack: Jews Not Jaws?

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Newspapers are always treating wire articles as pulp content. It’s accepted practice for editors to trim down stories and change headlines because of space limitations.

But once in awhile, I compare the original story with what was printed in a local paper, and wonder, Why did someone edit like this?

Case in point: Reuters, The Scotsman, and a deadly Red Sea shark attack.

Here we have an otherwise ordinary Reuters dispatch by Mohamed Zaki.

Now see what The Scotsman did:

Mentioning Mossad along with sharks makes for a pretty sexy headline, but why does The Scotsman give unwarranted credibility to one official’s anti-Semitic allegation with a headline like that?