Unfortunate slogans and headlines...

Just saw this one on MWeb home page:

How will you honour Mother's Day 2008?
Breakfast in bed?
Rather enter your Mom to win R10 000!

(Ahem, so shortly after those highly publicised incest scandals...)

Then there was this pamphlet I got in the post with the heading:

FIGHT ALL YOUR BATTLES ON YOUR KNEES AND YOU WIN EVERY TIME

(Hmm, suppose it depends what you're doing there. You could have someone really, really at your mercy, but it didn't help Monica Lewinsky.)

And one of my favourites, even though it isn't remotely dirty:

Last year a local media company came up with the brilliant idea of publishing a really narrow newspaper so that it could easily be read on a plane. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell it only appeared once. One wonders if it had anything to do with the highly relevant, but possibly not quite appropriate, lead story:

The last 30 seconds of Kenya Airlines Flight 705

Some of the worst were at two newspapers where I worked. In the very first month of my journalistic career it rained heavily in the Cape on the weekend when the Metropolitan, a horse race where socialites traditionally appear to be seen in designer outfits, was being run. The night editor concluded that there was little by the way of news, and wrote the headline:

RAIN SPOILS MET FASHIONS

He only happened to miss the fact that the same rain had caused extensive flooding that drowned almost a whole town - still considered one of the greatest natural disasters in South African history. Our paper was rather a sorry sight among the rest of the morning publications...

Another time the Johannesburg city council was most unfortunate in its timing of a campaign to promote the comfort and safety of its public transport system. Its ad was designed to be simple but eyecatching: The words RELAX. CATCH A BUS filled a quarter of the front page. The rest of the page was devoted to a terrible tragedy in which one of the council's buses, filled with school kids, had plunged into a lake, killing most on board. (The editor suggested removing the ad from the late edition...)

Sky News once had this headline to describe David Seaman replacing the departing Peter Schmeichel in goals:

Keegan fills Schmeichel's gap with Seaman.

I don't know if it counts though because there's no way in the world it was accidental.

about as accidental as ...

'Police on Tuesday apprehended two men for robbing women as they were hanging out their undergarments.

No-one was hurt in the snatches'.

Don't know what it is like now, but way back The Star was the most prestigious and highly regarded daily paper in this part of the country. When a prominent French literary figure died, the editor thought that would make a good poster. Unfortunately he went out for the day on business, and the guy given the job was not too well versed in slang terms. Late afternoon, as the editor drove back into town, he was horrified to be greeted with the words, adorning every lamppost:

GRAND OLD MAN OF FRENCH LETTERS DIES

mynah wrote:Don't know what it is like now, but way back The Star was the most prestigious and highly regarded daily paper in this part of the country. When a prominent French literary figure died, the editor thought that would make a good poster. Unfortunately he went out for the day on business, and the guy given the job was not too well versed in slang terms. Late afternoon, as the editor drove back into town, he was horrified to be greeted with the words, adorning every lamppost:

GRAND OLD MAN OF FRENCH LETTERS DIES

Noice . . .

Erm, what does "noice" mean? , , , :silent: or :?: ?

Not really on topic, but this is an old story among Indian journos.

Back in the 50s there was a mining accident, and scores of miners were trapped when a shaft collapsed. Next day the 24 point headline in one paper: "Sons of Toil/ Under Tons of Soil"

.

HAHA. Nice one mynah!

He must not have been wearing protection?

Also boggling the mind ...

A flasher disturbed two nuns out for a walk in a city park today. One had a heart attack, the other had a stroke.


I'll get me coat...

I think this headline (in today's Brisbane Times) might qualify although they obviously can't spell.

Virgin set to axe poor performing routes

I guess they missed the target.

I recently got this reminder from my server about its affiliated TV service: Innocent Times to end Wednesday 28 May at 20:00 on MNet