BETTERIDGE'S LAW OF HEADLINES

Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Comments:

• It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older.

• It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.

• The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions.

• It has also been referred to as the "journalistic principle" and in 2007 was referred to in commentary as "an old truism among journalists".

• Betteridge's name became associated with the concept after he discussed it in a February 2009 article:

This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.

• A similar observation was made by British newspaper editor Andrew Marr in his 2004 book My Trade, among Marr's suggestions for how a reader should interpret newspaper articles:

If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'.

• Some examples: