--- title: Cherry-picked clips and clickbait headlines — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Cherry-picked clips and clickbait headlines», a lesson of the politics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A short clip can be made of real words and still tell a false story, because what was cut out can flip the meaning. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/) / Cherry-picked clips and clickbait head… # Cherry-picked clips and clickbait headlines Lesson 33 of the politics course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/0/) — A short clip can be made of real words and still tell a false story, because what was cut out can flip the meaning. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/1/) — Imagine someone records you saying "I hate broccoli", but cuts off the start, "My little brother says", and shows it to your gran: every word is yours, and the story is still wrong. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/2/) — Old videos get new captions, photos get cropped so a crowd looks tiny or huge, and one trip or one laugh is made to stand for the whole person. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/3/) — Clickbait headlines shout and hide the facts so you click, and headlines with a scary question often have the answer "no" inside. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/4/) — The fix is to find the whole thing: the full speech, the real page, the wider photo, the story under the headline. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/5/) — Cutting a clip so its meaning changes is unfair, even if every word in it is real; this is taking it out of context. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/6/) — Old videos are often shared with new captions as if they were happening now; this is called recycled footage. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/7/) — Clickbait is a headline made to get clicks rather than to tell the news, and websites earn money from the adverts you see when you click. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/8/) — Headlines are short and often leave out the important "maybe" and "only" that the story underneath says. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/9/) — Cropping a photo can make a crowd look small or huge, which is why people argue about crowd sizes. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/10/) — Moments shown without what happened before can make anyone look bad, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by mistake. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/11/) — One clip shows one moment, not the whole person; choosing only the bits that fit is called cherry-picking. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/12/) — A big percentage can sound scary when the real numbers are tiny: up from 2 to 3 cases is "up 50%". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/13/) — A headline asking a scary question is not a fact; Betteridge's law is a joke rule that such questions can usually be answered "no". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/14/) — To check a clip, find the full event on an official channel or a news outlet and watch a minute before and after. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/15/) — A screenshot of a headline is easy to change; the real article on the outlet's own website is what counts. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/16/) — Words in this lesson: "mid" means average or not very good; "I'm dead" means "that's so funny"; "dreich" is Scottish for grey and wet weather; "yeah nah" in Australia and New Zealand means no. - ← previous: [Bots, troll farms and deepfakes in elections](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/) - next →: [Algorithms, bubbles and false balance](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/34-algorithms-bubbles-and-false-balance/) - ↑ back to [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/)