Headlines: 'Sark fire blamed on a cleaner'

The most misleading news headline of the day goes to the Metro free paper with:

Sark fire blamed on a cleaner


In reality, the fire that caused £10m of damage to the Cutty Sark last year wasn't caused by a person who cleans – but by an industrial vacuum cleaner that had accidentally been left on for two days. Of course, it is possible that the cleaner had been left on by a cleaner, so to speak.

The Sky News website decided to run with an almost identical (and just as misleading) headline.

And here's some rather more enlightening video footage on the cause of the Cutty Sark fire from Telegraph.co.uk. I've had to change the dimensions to get it to fit on the blog so apologies if it looks a bit squashed or otherwise doesn't display properly:

1 comment:

Ellen Kozisek said...

This may be a American/British difference, but I took "cleaner" to mean some sort of substance used to clean, in this case, something flamable. I would not take "cleaner" to refer to a person who cleans. But I also wouldn't take it to refer to a machine that cleans.