Ok, that's the last straw. I'm officially switching my home page. Yeah, yeah, I know, not exactly front page news, but the reason I'm switching it is part of a much larger problem.

Up until now I've used Apple's default home page, which is hosted by Netscape. It's a pretty ordinary "everything you need at your fingertips" type of site like Yahoo or MSN. Like all sites of this nature, the Apple site has a prominently featured news section. In this case, the news content comes from CNN. Now we all know that CNN likes to drive in the left lane, but their web based news takes things to a whole new low. While there is certainly the expected left leaning bias, the people who write the headlines, which serve as hyperlinks on this site, are completely out of control. The headlines are so exaggerated and embellished that they often bear little resemblance to the event that they're referring to. I know a good headline is supposed to get you to read the story, but this site has become a joke. Here's one of today's headlines:

U.S. Compound Blasted in Iraq

Now, perhaps I'm naive, but this sounds like one of our compounds was blown up, or at least severely damaged, which is disturbing news. Of course, I took the bait and clicked the hyperlink. The next page had the following headline:

Iraqi Rebels Fire Shells at U.S. Compound

Ok, so in the nanosecond it took to load the next page, the situation seems to have improved a bit at our compound in Iraq. Further reading reveals that there were no injuries and only light damage to a non critical building. In other words, this is a non story. Of course, most of the rest of the article goes on to detail all of the recent attacks on our troops, which revealed what seems to be the true purpose of this article: spreading fear uncertainty and doubt about the Iraq situation.

To be fair, here are all the other CNN headlines today:

Murderer Charged With Killing, Burying 3 Teens
Tenn. Crash-Landing Kills Four
Gay Officers Slam Military Policy
Drunkenness Gene Found in Worm
Man Said Parents Dead 40 Times

I checked all of these stories, and in each case the headline accurately describes the event, without exaggeration. So it does seem that CNN is capable of writing an accurate headline. What has pushed me over the edge is the fact that the headline embellishments only seem to crop up when the story is about Iraq, Halliburton, SUV's or some other topic that CNN sees as reflecting badly on the current administration. I get sucked in almost every day by these headlines just to find out that nothing has really happened, but CNN felt compelled to remind me of the things that Bush is doing wrong in their eyes.

While I'll miss the Apple specific stuff on the site, its just not worth it to sift through CNN's pretend news every day.