Controversial Headlines: ‘Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer’

This heading leaped out at me from one of my favorite UK newspaper The Independent, last Thursday, and as expected, led to a great surge of controversy and debate for days to follow. What I found particularly striking about this, besides of course the obvious problems of continuing to perceive of race as a biological fact, one with a determining role in a group’s intelligence, was the manner in which this story was first covered.

The above caption screams out in large font, beside a picture of James Watson, a renown scientist and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for his research on DNA, with only a small addendum at the bottom: ‘Fury over scientist’s theory: “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.”’ This headline could incline the reader to believe that because the person making this claim is a ‘DNA pioneer’ there must/could be some truth in it. Furthermore, allocating the entire front page to this title and the story associated with it places a lot of importance on Watson’s theory, without making the questionable aspects of this theory as obvious. This can be quite dangerous in a society where racism and racial discrimination are still predominant.

It is quite irksome that the editors chose to highlight this particular news item in what can be interpreted as a very misleading cover. I am not denying that this is a story that should have been covered by the media, but I do believe that reporting on such a controversial issue should be done in a slightly more responsible manner. It is already difficult enough to break the general population’s belief on the existence of ‘race’ as a biological reality—this can only serve to strengthen that view and lead to further hierarchization of these so-called races.

Challenges to Watson’s theory do appear, but only later in the article, which can be found inside the paper. But the damage is done, in my opinion, especially considering the low number of people who actually read papers nowadays. Most people will probably only have glanced at the title page as they walk by a newsstand. Perhaps I am being a little cynical about people’s capacity to think beyond what they might read on a front cover. However, in a land where tabloids and trashy magazines are rampant, and widely sold, it is discouraging to find a leading quality newspaper opting for a sensational headline in order to sell more copies, instead of outlining the story in a less misleading fashion. Then again, maybe I expect too much out of print media.