A thunderous email hit my inbox last week:

“This makes me so mad! [three red, angry face emojis]”

“Yes, I’m cursing… in Spanish…”

My heart sank, with my first thought being, “Oh crap, what did I do?” Also, why is Ana McGuire so mad? My colleague of 16 years, a native of Mexico with a masters from K-State in meat science and truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, never gets mad. I’ve never known her to curse, either, in any language.

But, oh, what do we have here, further down in the email?

It’s a screenshot of a story from foodie news site Mashed, posted on MSN, with the headline “The Disturbing Reason An Alert Was Issued for Perdue Chicken Tenders.”

Below that, for comparison, was a screenshot of our story on the same news, with the headline “Perdue ‘withdraws’ frozen chicken products from market.”

Still uncertain as to the source of Ana’s anger — one of those stories? Both? — I quickly read ‘em back to back. I then realized (phew!) it was the “disturbing” story and the irresponsible reporting behind it. Thankfully, she was citing our story as an example of the opposite.

The Mashed blurb was so badly reported that, while mentioning the public health alert-triggering foreign material — a "small piece of clear plastic and blue dye inside it" — it did not explain in any way why that would be “disturbing.” In fact, it was secondary to a long prelude about what products Perdue makes, and what they don’t make (with a reference to “pink slime”).

Sure, different sites have different goals. In the world of SEO (search engine optimization), the right word triggers clicks. But information — and misinformation — travels at light speed.

Word use is important. One, headlines are a dangerous place for subjective adjectives. Two, don’t tell readers how they should feel, especially if you’re not even going to give supporting reasons as to why they should feel that way. Three, leave out the adjective altogether and let the reader decide how to feel about the information. Four, offer more information.

Left out of the Mashed piece was the fact that, as Perdue’s news release stated, the foreign material was found in a “minimal amount of consumer packages.”

I’m glad that our story, reported by editor-in-chief Lisa M. Keefe, contained that nugget. But I was curious as to why she used the word “withdrawn” in quotes; as a reader, when I see a quoted word in a headline, it can smack of a reporter’s subjective skepticism. And so I asked for her rationale, which ultimately shed light on how thoughtful and careful she was in her approach to this seemingly straightforward, simple story.

First off, by her thinking, was that this was not a recall. It was a public health alert from USDA. Secondly, processors don’t typically issue their own press releases on such matters, and this was a rare opportunity to quote one’s own wording. The company used the word “withdraw,” again, because it is not legally a recall, and Lisa’s thinking was that using that word without quotes might leave some readers open to thinking, “Why not just call it a recall?”

“Paranoia is the journalist’s friend,” she concluded.

I guess it depends on how that “paranoia” is used — as a way to stoke fear in readers, or as an internal governing tool to exercise an abundance of caution.

Disturbed and paranoid

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