Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


COPY DESK WATCH….I’d like to nominate this for misleading headline of the year:

Prop. 2 probably won’t hike egg prices

Proposition 2 is the initiative that requires hens to be kept in cages that allow them to move around a bit. I voted for it, and it passed yesterday 63%-37%. But here’s the story behind the headline:

Egg prices probably will not increase for Californians, according to a study by the UC Davis Agricultural Issues Center. That’s because out-of-state farmers, who already supply Californians a third of their eggs — and could provide more — are not affected by the new law, so they won’t have to change their housing.

….”The most likely outcome, therefore, is the elimination of almost all of the California egg industry over a few years,” says the report.

So egg prices won’t go up, but only because the California egg industry will be utterly destroyed. By this logic, the headline after Black Tuesday should have been, “Apple industry opens new distribution channel on Wall Street.” Sheesh.

UPDATE: Actually, this is even weirder than it looks. The print version of this story bears practically no resemblance to the online version, and doesn’t even include the quote about the elimination of the egg industry. Very strange.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate