Sigh – headlines again

The NZ Herald uses the most negative emotive language with their headline of “Nats again exploit PM’s lack of children” and a lead sentence of “The National Party launched a fresh assault on Helen Clark’s childlessness yesterday”.

Good God, they repeated an observation made by a Labour MP, and they get demonised as being an “assault” and “exploitation”.

And then at the other end of the scale you have the headline the 9th floor must have written: “Clark makes a new close friend in Yudhoyono“. How in hell do they declare she is now close friends with the President of Indonesia based on one meeting?

What happened to neutral headlines like:

National criticises Clark as being out of touch with families
PM Clark has productive meeting with Indonesian President

Instead we get blatant spin.