**TL;DR - Headlines are a big catalyst in the fake news debate** Headlines are what draw you in to read an article, well that’s what they are supposed to do! More often than not people read a punchy headline and assume the rest of the article. Take this example “Joe Biden to bring home a trillion dollars”. On face value people may think “Wow the President gets paid a lot” or " he doesn’t care about the people, just his wallet”. Yet the article may read “President Biden to increase economy by a trillion dollars”. Here we can see just how impactful headlines can be. [Headlines then can affect] (https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/headlines-change-way-think) what existing thoughts or feelings you have so you create your own story. As a millennial and Gen-Z generation, we appreciate quick news and instant knowledge. However with this, headlines are promoting a falsehood as many are not reading the article but are just seeing the headlines.

**TL;DR: The reliability of headlines often depends on your news source.** Like meglev24 previously mentioned, the whole purpose of headlines is to offer a brief, concise summary of the article, and to generate as many clicks as possible. This is the whole nature of a headline. If newspapers were to write a long summary of what an article was actually about, then it wouldn't get as many hits. However, I think there needs to be a discussion on the credibility of the source. Newspapers like the Guardian are more reliable and factually accurate than newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Mail, who are known for being more controversial and outlandish to get more clicks. For example, this week I saw one Daily Mail article headline that said 'Gigi and Bella attack Israel' - which is very misleading, as when you clicked on the article, the post was about the Hadid sisters showing solidarity to Palestine. By nature, tabloid magazines do anything to get clicks, and this promotes fake news - someone reading headlines and taking them at face value is likely to then spread misinformation. Broadsheet magazines, whilst I don't deny are exempt from this, are less likely to contribute to the spread of misinformation as their purpose is to report on major news events, so by default have to be more concise and factually accurate.

Is the argument here that the requirements for clicks promotes deliberate bad-headline writing, which ultimately promotes a kind of fake news?

TL;DR - The culture around how we consume news has changed, which makes consumption of misleading headlines more common. I think all points raised here are relevant. The way we consume our media has also changed drastically in recent years. Headlines are often all we see of a story when the hyperlink is posted on the Facebook or Twitter page of a new outlet. As meglev24 says: 'As a millennial and Gen-Z generation, we appreciate quick news and instant knowledge.' But how instant is this knowledge that we are consuming? Do we just consume the headline and continue to scroll? It would be interesting to see the reach of some news outlets social media posts versus their clickthrough rate - to see how many people are actually reading the stories they read the headlines for.

**TL;DR** - **Headlines can fail to encapsulate the full essence of a news story.** This idea of fake news, as coined by now-former president Donald Trump, is used, not necessarily to call out incorrect stories but to disparage and discredit opinions that are viewed unfavourably by someone. Now, with the news cycle and indeed news websites more politicised than ever, headlines play a large part in shaping our initial conception of a story. Depending on whether you are reading a left-wing or a right-wing publication, the headlines will immediately shape your understanding of the news story. To that end, it is not necessarily the headlines themselves that promote fake news, but the way in which they are used. Two headlines on the same story which are diametrically opposed lead to the use of the term fake news. Because they are so different, it creates the idea that one is wrong and the other is right.