# Misleading headlines > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Misleading headlines," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/misleading-headlines/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's argument that the headline rather than the article is where American news does its work, that major papers routinely run headlines unsupported by the evidence beneath them, and that the problem was frequent enough for his radio show to devote a weekly segment to it.* - **The claim:** Most Americans read the headline, not the article - **Papers named:** The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal - **His response:** A weekly Friday segment on his radio show - **Frequency he gives:** Every single day **Misleading headlines** are, in [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account, the mechanism by which American readers end up believing things their own newspapers have not claimed.[1] ## The claim What he says he learned over the year or two before 2018 is that most Americans do not read the article, they read the headline. Headlines are enormously impactful simply in the way they are worded. And the offenders he names are not marginal outlets but the major papers: the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal will run a headline that is either factually incorrect or leads the reader to believe something the evidence beneath it does not support.[1] He presents this as routine rather than occasional. It happens, he says, every single day in America, often enough that his own radio show carried a standing segment every Friday devoted to misleading headlines.[2] ## The worked example The case in front of him was the indictment of twelve Russians for the DNC hack, reported under headlines presenting it as a major development. Buried in the article, in a line from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, was the statement that the indictment does not allege that any U.S. citizen committed a crime, nor that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.[3][4] The placement is the point: the sentence that qualifies the story out of existence sits where, on his own account of how the paper is read, almost nobody will reach it.[4][1] ## See also - [Russiagate](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/russiagate) - [American media consolidation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/american-media-consolidation) - [CIA media relations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-media-relations) - [Treason](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/treason) ## Sources 1. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 03:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=217s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/ 2. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 04:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=247s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/ 3. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 02:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=154s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/ 4. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 03:05. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=185s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/misleading-headlines/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt