William Shatner Questions ‘Captain Jerk’ Headline
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The Daily News cc:ed @WilliamShatner late Saturday night when they tweeted out the preview (at right) of their Sunday front page. This has led to an active discussion of the headline among Shatner’s Twitter followers.
First and foremost, the headline echos a tradition that is even more regularly upon online; namely, a sensationalized headline that does not reflect the gist of the article. As Shatner tweeted, correctly, the NYDN piece by Kirthana Remisetti and Denis Slattery has a different tone.
If the headline truly reflected the lede and more, it would have said something along the lines of: “Is Shatner a Captain Jerk for Skipping Spock’s Funeral?” But if you believe Shatner and many others, that doesn’t move as many newspapers.
On Twitter, a great many of those responding to Shatner’s call for discussion agree with his puzzlement at the “horrible” headline. Predictably, the reaction is a little bit more split in the Daily News article comments:
Not Telling: Come on guys, Shatner’s 83 years old and on a different coast. Expecting him to take a flight out [of Florida] at 2 a.m. is probably not terribly fair. He doesn’t really owe anybody other than Nimoy’s family an explanation, but personally I’ll take him at his word that he feels terrible he can’t make it.
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