Newspaper Runs Misleading Victor Cruz Injury Headline

There is something called integrity in journalism. Unfortunately, that small aspect of the job seems to be lost on quite a few “journalists” in the social media era.

Not necessarily known as a hard-hitting and in-depth newspaper, the New York Daily News ran this headline following the New York Giants loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. The headline focuses on the horrendous injury that Giants receiver Victor Cruz suffered in the game.

Now the tweet sent out by local Philadelphia radio personality Mike Missanelli was beyond horrible. And to be honest, he heard about it from fans of both teams before deleting it.

Rather, NY Daily News focuses on an Eagles employee known simply as Charlie.

In one freeze frame, it surely looks like “Charlie” was gloating over the Cruz injury. But leave it to the paper to completely ignore context. The following GIF is from Deadspin. 

It’s rather obvious here that the employee was celebrating the dropped pass, not Cruz’s injury. In fact, he appeared to be impacted a great deal (like the entire stadium) by the injury later on.

You can see “Charlie” on his knees directly above Cary Williams (#26).

In yet another photo, it’s pretty obvious that the Eagles employee wasn’t celebrating in any way (bottom left).

At a time when the public is losing trust in the media, it’s important not to jump to conclusions and provide false information. This is only magnified with information becoming available in the matter of seconds in the social media age.

Unfortunately, those who decided to run this headline over at NY Daily News had time to research the topic before going to press with it. And in reality, that shows a tremendous lack of integrity on their part.

Photo: Deadspin.com