A Tale of Two Headlines

Media bias is everywhere, sometimes its funny, and sometimes it used to brainwash, this is a story of the funny.  For my cycling news, I mainly default to three websites.  Drunkcyclist takes care of the cycling/life/rants/fill in the blank, VeloSnooze for domestic stuff, and CyclingSnooze for anything else I might miss.  For race news, I prefer CyclingSnooze, for a couple of reasons 1.) They cover more races 2.)seem to provide a better report, with more photos and 3.)don't seem to have some sort of quota for weekly articles where they stroke Lance Armstrong's ego.  But today, I was thrown off by what I would have to call a "pro-Euro" slant of one of their headlines.

Yesterday over in Nommay (somewhere in Europe), there was a Cyclocross World Cup, where Niels Albert, and Katie Compton won the men's and women's race respectively.  The headline provided by CyclingSnooze for the women's race read, "Vos second to USA 'cross specialist"  Now before I do anything more to make myself look like the ugly-America, the race report did go on to describe how Compton basically stomped out the field, and that she is the top female cross racer out there.  Vos is the current women's world champ for cross, so I get that she will get a fair amount of coverage no matter what result she gets, but to exclude Compton's name for the report headline, just seems silly to me.  Also referring to Compton as a "cross specialist" is an understatement, she does have a short track national championship, oodles and oodles of results on the track, and to boot she can rock a singlespeed with the best of them.  Refer to Compton as what she truly is, a "talented all around cyclist."

Conversely, if you head on over to the coverage of the race by VeloSnooze, the headline includes Compton's name.  That was the only thing they got right, there were no pictures to speak of, and I think that the report was slapped together based on a bunch of notes written on the back of a greasy napkin.  There wasn't much of report to describe what went on during the race, so VeloSnooze is once again second fiddle as far as providing an actual report.  I doubt that the folks who write reports over at CyclingSnooze have a honest bias against the US, that they want to portray through report headlines, but this was just something that caught my eye.  Come on, the US got ride of Bush, Armstrong didnt win the tour, and I dont think there is a menu that has "freedom fries" on it anymore, which should be enough to make Europe stop thinking of the US like the kid who got left behind in kindergarten because they couldnt figure out how to use scissors and ate paste.  Maybe Compton will use this most likely unintentional slap in the face to get super pissed off, and just destroy the rest of the field for the rest of the year.