This week the Poultry Science Association hosted a free webinar with Dr. Mindy Brashears, the former Undersecretary for Food Safety at USDA FSIS. I really enjoyed listening to her perspective regarding data and the media (including social media).

At one point in her webinar, she made a comment that stuck with me: “Read the story, not the headline.” I had an ah-ha moment. Headlines matter. I always knew they were important, and I spend time deciding what my title, or headline, is going to be for this blog.

How many times have we read an article because the title capture our attention and — behold! —the article had nothing to do with the title. Or, more often than not, the article was so much less dramatic than the title and we become disengaged. Our choice to click or swipe is mostly chosen by the headline. Headlines can really change the way we think about a story. The headline determines how many people click and read an article. It is what we call “the grabber;” headlines grab our attention and immediately create a reaction, one that either encourages us to swipe or click and read.

Even more than attention grabbing, headlines can affect the way we read an article and the way we remember the information in the article. It allows us to judge before even reading. Headlines can frame our experience before we even read anything. For example, a recent COVID-19 headline pertaining to our industry stated, “OSHA and USDA waited months to tackle COVID outbreaks in meatpacking plants emails reveal.” The message to the reader was "blame USDA for COVID spread."

In reality, and as the data indicates, there were precautions taken early and there was no waiting regarding safety precautions in poultry plants. Companies were proactive in developing plans and coordinating with CDC on the process of keeping people safe. It is because those precautions were taken that we had poultry meat in grocery stores and on our table. However, the title was grabbing and created an emotion followed by a reaction within the reader which encouraged further reading.

If the headline had been more focused on everything the plants were doing to keep people safe, there probably would have been more swipes than clicks. Our minds are trained to enoy the drama of a headline.

Back to the webinar and my ah-ha moments. Dr. Brashears has always been a data-driven, science-based person and her motto of (I'm paraphrasing here) "trust the data, it is telling us a story" is a good reminder. All data tells a story and we should trust both the data and the data- driven story. We have a lot of data in our industry that tells the story of our successful commitment to food safety and quality. Why don’t we use this data to tell our story, attach a headline grabber, and communicate it to our customers and consumers?

We are not getting the positive out about our industry, which allows the consumer groups and other non-agricultural entities to drive our story. It is our story to drive, not theirs. It is our livelihood and our life day-in and day-out, and we should be the ones telling the story. We should be the ones with the grabber headline and the data to support the headline.

For example, Google “poultry line speed” and see how many negative grabbers there are in the media, including social media. Now count the number of positive grabbers; most likely the only one that will show up is from Google scholar which is the article published in the journal Poultry Science which shows the data and tells the story of why line speeds are a good thing for our industry. The actual data in this publication is what dispels the myths, but there is no grabber headline to encourage people to click and read, so they swipe.

I encourage everyone to read the article – it is free and available for all to read thanks to open access.

I love ah-ha moments! They are great reminders for me to refocus and not fall into traps. My ah-ha moments and take away points from this Poultry Science Association webinar with Dr Brashears are 1) headlines matter and 2) be smart and trust the data. If we can keep that in mind, we can be better advocates for our industry in media and social media.

Read the story, not the headline!

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