Headlines and Motives - next part

President Bush vetoed a stem cell bill yesterday. I am not sure what the right response should have been. On the one hand, I am generally in favor of all things which would advance scientific knowledge. On the other, I am also pretty clear that our efforts to normalize abortion are wrong. Ultimately, I think many moral decisions should not be controlled by government. But there are and should be some limits. Roe has been interpreted too far, IMHO. There should not be an absolute right to abortion - for example, I think parental consent for minors is a sensible idea. I am generally offended by some of the advocates for abortion who claim that there is an absolute right to abortion and that fathers should not be involved. I am concerned when, with all the other technologies available to prevent conception that some women use abortion as a birth control method. Yet, the risks of non-standard medical procedures is substantial. The specter of back alley abortions was both real and troubling. As I have thought about the broader issue of abortion - I tend to want to come back to a decision between a woman and her doctor (with an overlay of responsibility or involvement of the father) - that is admittedly a jumbled response - but I think it mirrors where a good part of society is - commited to allowing a considerable amount of flexibility in this matter but not allowing this issue full and free reign.

So the message on stem cells, in my mind, is that we should allow science to proceed with caution on figuring out whether this branch of research is going to help out our search to end some diseases. This issue is obviously tied up with the abortion issue. But I also see the other side on stem cells - we should not be encouraging the creation of these research tools without a recognition of the very real moral dangers we face. This is one of those issues, I think like abortion, where our moral guides and our political ones are not entirely reconciled. But I also believe that the ultimate decision by the President was based on first a set of principles (which I think I may disagree with in part) and then a set of politics. That is a rather long explanation of why I watched the coverage of the story in the papers I read this morning to understand whether they were conveying news or politics.

In this story the NYT seems to have played it straight - their headline was Bush Veto Maintains Limits on Stem Cell Use. The LA Times included the fact that an over-ride was unsuccessful. I think that is where the news on this story was - the first Bush veto was made and sustained. Leave it to the editorialists to opine on whether Bush's decision made sense either politically or on a policy basis. But the Sacramento Bee used the following headline - "Stem cell veto has risks" The story was actually covered in the politics not the national news section. The Washington Post had a similar headline to the NYT. I think the NYT and the Post were about right - the story here is that Bush used his first veto on this issue.

There was a second story this morning about Bush's speech to the NAACP. Here again there were some interesting perspectives on how major papers covered the story in their headline. The Sacramento Bee covered the speech in the following headline - Bush acknowledges racism still exists. The New York Times covered it thusly - Bush Seeks to Strengthen Ties to Black Voters. Is the substance of his speech to this important national group the substance of his speech or his political effort?

Headline writing is not a science. The appearance on these two stories suggests that headline writers believe that some of their work is to convey a picture even for those who will not read the story. That is unfortunate. The news business should be about news.