Headlines are really hard to write, and I say that as someone whose first full-time journalism job was on a copy desk in a daily newspaper.
If you think that it’s hard to write news stories that offer some sense of fairness and balance on complicated issues, you should try doing the same thing in a headline — with punch and maybe even a few terms that appeal to search engines. Copy editors have nightmares about being asked to write big, bold one- or two-column headlines for hot stories on A1 (back when there was such a thing as A1 and it mattered).
So I rarely respond when readers send me angry notes about headlines. But this time I will make an exception. This one begs for what your GetReligionistas have long called the “mirror image” treatment. What would the headline look like if you flipped it around?
The headline at The Hill proclaims: “Federal judge overturns ObamaCare transgender protections.”
That led to this email from a GetReligion reader:
OK, I guess that’s one way to look at it. But how about this way: “Federal judge rules that doctors can’t be forced to violate their consciences”?
Which is more accurate? I would argue the latter since the rule wasn’t really about “protections” since there are doctors willing to do the surgeries and prescribe the medications.
That’s a good point — that reference to pro-LGBTQ doctors and networks being willing to back the trans positions on these issues. Is this a case in which doctors with traditional religious beliefs can, or should, be forced to lose their jobs?
What would that headline look like when viewed in a mirror? Here is one that went the other way: “Judge Rules Doctors Can Decline To Perform Transgender Surgery On Religious Grounds.”
That one is accurate, too, in terms of facts at the heart of this complicated story. Can you imagine a headline that would salute LGBTQ rights as well as the First Amendment?
So what about the story itself? Here is the overture at The Hill:
A federal judge on … overturned ObamaCare protections for transgender patients, ruling that a 2016 policy violates the religious freedom of Christian providers.
Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas vacated an Obama-era regulation that prohibited insurers and providers who receive federal money from denying treatment or coverage to anyone based on sex, gender identity or termination of pregnancy.
It also required doctors and hospitals to provide “medically necessary” services to transgender individuals as long as those services were the same ones provided to other patients.
O’Connor, the same judge who last year ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, said the rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. His ruling is likely to be appealed.
It’s a strange, quickie story — with no depth, provided via quotations from legal experts on either side. In a way, that makes the headline even more important.
If you are looking for the opposite point of view from the headline, here it is:
The ObamaCare rule was initially challenged in court in 2016 by a group of Christian providers called the Franciscan Alliance as well as five conservative states. They argued that the rule forces insurers to pay for abortions and compels doctors to perform gender transition services even if they disagree with those services on moral or medical grounds.
One more time: Can anyone propose a headline for this news event that would please activists on both sides?
ybvdadminuser
