I admit, when I worked on newspapers putting sarcastic joke headlines as placeholders was one of the things I enjoyed. But I started to cut back toward the end of my college journalism career, because I was always paranoid that something like this would happen:
A press rep for Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado was working on a press release that would include a quote from Allard saying nice things about first responders. Except that Allard didn’t actually come up with the quote – that was the press rep’s job. (We’ll have the discussion about the wisdom of making up quotes in press releases later. I’ve been having that one since I was on my high school yearbook staff and it’s pretty clear I’m on the losing side.) And the press rep was having trouble coming up with nice things to say about first responders, and decided to ask for help. In the quote. And the press rep then sent out the version of the release with the request for help. With the result being that Allard was quoted as saying
Since I don’t think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here…
Well, if you can’t think of anything nice to say . . .