A dangerous game

We all know the content landscape is shifting. Trusted brands are becoming secondary to quick bites of content presented via aggregators. Some of those aggregators even add opinion to the stories, blurring the lines between objective reporting and (Now comes the next step in the transformation. Techmeme, the content aggregator, will start re-writing headlines, but not just because they think can write catchier phrases. They’ll do so to even “undermine what we’re linking to.” 

I get re-writing. News organizations have re-written copy since the dawn of journalism. I even get adding content and opinion to existing news stories (I don't like it much, but I get that's what many customers expect nowadays). But re-writing to, potentially, undermine the premise? That's troubling. The copy editors --- and that's what they are --- aren't in the newsroom that produced the story. They don't know what went into the news gathering process or editorial discussions. All they know is what they read. It seems to me that changing a headline (or the body) of a story to undermine the initial concept is just flat out wrong. It misleads the public --- maybe intentionally --- and takes another step towards disintegrating the public trust.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.