« Not Happy and Showing It | Main | Same Song, Different Verse »

March 11, 2005

Truncation Brings Alarm

If you visit the website of The Standard today, you'll be greeted with this:

The Standard, 12 March 2005 local time

For those who can't see PNGs or don't want to bother clicking on the image, here's their front cover story:

Apocalypse next
Hong Kong has virtually shut down as hospitals are inundated with thousands of suspected bird flu cases.

After months of warnings from health officials, an avian influenza virus capable of rapid human-to-human transmission is a reality. The virus has mutated quickly from an earlier form passed from poultry to people.

Those outside Hong Kong might be somewhat alarmed. Those in Hong Kong might be somewhat confused. Because clicking on the link will take you to an article that begins with a hypothetical nightmare scenario. The article itself begins with the line “Picture this:”, and, after the depiction of the scenario, continues with the question “Could this nightmare scenario occur?” But you don't see any of that on the front page. Seriously, if you had a cough this morning and read that the moment you woke up, I imagine that you might be calling 999 pretty soon.

I'm guessing that the Standard web crew automatically copies the first couple of paragraphs from the article onto the main page, but geez, doesn't anyone edit and think before posting it online?

Posted by Kelvin at March 11, 2005 10:38 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.kelvin-chan.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/72

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?