Ambiguous BBC News headline: 'Children's boss axed after death'

I'm not sure about the BBC News headline 'Children's boss axed after death':

Children's boss axed after death

So first the children's boss died, and then someone hacked at her corpse with an axe? Wait, no - it wasn't her death, and she was only axed metaphorically.

Even changing 'axed' to 'sacked' would have made for a better headline - and it's not as if two extra characters would have caused it to bust.


UPDATE - I've just looked again at the story on the BBC News website and spotted that the headline has been rewritten since I took my original screengrab yesterday:

Salford children's director fired after toddler death
So 'axed' has become 'fired' and 'death' is now qualified with 'toddler'. In addition, 'Children's boss' has become 'Salford children's director'.

2 comments:

M.H. Forsyth said...

It's something to do with getting the chop. We mentioned it over at Inky Fool http://inkyfool.blogspot.com/2009/11/axe.html

The Ridger, FCD said...

Its also a great initiative by the FunnelBrain team.

Could he sound more like a shill?