“Police Cruise Totaled While Chasing Car” is the lead, above the fold headline in the Ledger-Transcript for May 1, 2008.

Apparently, from reading the headline, no people were involved – just a police cruiser chasing a car. Typical of stories involving police department mishaps is the giving of life to inanimate objects such as cruisers and most often, guns.

It must be natural for a “reporter” to come up with titles that will help soften the bad news that sooner or later comes with local police departments. In small towns everything gets noticed and it is hard to hide a roll-over during a high speed chase.

The same local news papers that write endless stories about this or that person in town getting some award always rely on local police for hard news such as an arrest or criminal investigation.

I scan the news for information our taxpayer organization, The Coalition of NH Taxpayers, can use while keeping in mind almost every news story I have ever been involved with had a bit more to it than what was presented to the reader.

Funny how reporters can’t seem to get all the facts in the news but many have time to gin up a sympathetic headline when it serves their purpose.