A slight inaccuracy is a big deal when you have 500 million-plus viewers

It is hard to miss this headline on the yahoo home page today: “Big blunder part of wild loss” accompanied by a picture of rookie Eagles receiver, DeSean Jackson.

Now, there are at least two things incredibly wrong with that story (and not just because I’m an Eagles fan who watched her home team lose after leading for most of the 4th quarter).

1. On a day when Wall Street is tumbling and sending stocks reeling all over the world, a story about a rookie NFL player’s ego getting ahead of himself should not be the front page header on any site, though I must say this beats “how to find out if your man really likes you.” While forcing information down people’s throats is not good business or media strategy, journalism has to be able to do the delicate balance of offering relevant information to citizens while also satisfying its consumers (consumers and citizens being one and the same with very different tendencies). But a Yahoo! home page, which is uniquely positioned as a media source -- one that is incredibly hard to avoid regardless of whether you are checking your email, analyzing horoscopes or looking up a definition --- is the ideal platform to thrust important information on people without being guilty of the proverbial “hiding medicine in icecream” and I think giants like yahoo and google should be using their wide popularity to educate civilians.

2. The second reason why it’s wrong is that rookie wide receiver DeSean Jackson’s “bonehead move” as yahoo! calls it, while extremely asinine, had little to do with the Eagles’ loss itself. In the very next play, as the Yahoo! story goes on to explain, the ever-infallible Brian Westbrook covered the one yard needed to score the missed touchdown. There are many things that go right or wrong in a game, and any number of them are usually attributable to a loss, but articles such as these neither tell the whole story nor capture the excitement. There are times of course, when a game-changing or even season-changing mistake can occur, as with Tony Romo’s infamous botched snap in the NFC playoff round two years ago. Romo did have something similar for Eagles fans last night – a fumble that turned into a Philadelphia TD, turning the tide in favor of the birds. But it was a McNabb fumble in the last quarter, which might have cost Philly the game, though considering his flawless efficiency through most of it, it’s hard to place blame.

While football is unequivocally pleasing to the eye (be it a QB’s impeccably placed touchdown pass or the sight of his receiver rise with the ball and nestle it in his palms), often times we lesser mortals relive it last by reading the reviews and articles that follow on subsequent days and weeks. It would be a good idea for the media to do a better job of it.