Funny or sad? Perhaps a bit of both

In the health section of today's New York Times is this gem of a headline: "Tainted Drugs Tied to Maker of Abortion Pill." Oh no! Yet another thing that makes abortions bad and evil and scary and dangerous! But wait, what's this? Right there in the very first sentence of the article, the tainted drugs have absolutely nothing to do with RU-486, but rather, cancer drugs!

A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs.

Oh, but cancer isn't nearly as sexy and attention grabbing as abortion! Why go for accuracy over show-stopping?

I sent an e-mail criticising the headline writer and got this response: "You are not the first person to make that point." Well, at least my fellow times readers appear to be, you know, literate. More than I can say for some of the times employees, apparently.