Ideas for reading the news
Ten short pages on what to look for in a headline, and in a set of headlines. Each ends with questions for you to answer. None of them tells you what to think of an outlet or a story.
- Attribution: who says so?
A headline that names its source tells you whose claim you are reading.
- Quotation marks and “alleged”
Small marks and small words separate what someone claimed from what the outlet states.
- Framing
Every headline picks which true thing to put first.
- Agenda-setting: who covers what
What the news covers shapes what people think about.
- Naming choices
The word chosen for a person, a group or an event carries meaning before anything else is said.
- News and opinion
A report tells what happened; an opinion piece argues a view. Online, the line between them is easy to lose.
- Ownership
Every outlet is owned by someone, and one owner can have many outlets.
- Headline rewrites
Online headlines change after they are published. The first wording is often the one people shared.
- What Huduku’s outlets are, and aren’t
A count on Huduku is a count of what Huduku saw, not of all the news.
- Not naming survivors
Indian law forbids publishing anything that identifies a victim of a sexual offence. That includes your own work.
How to read the news → In the reading guide