Betteridge's law of headlines

Studies

A 2016 study of academic journals found few titles were questions, and those that were yes/no questions were more often answered yes in the article body than no. A 2018 study of ecology journals reported that only 2.15 percent of titles were yes/no questions; of those, 44 percent were answered yes, 34 percent maybe, and 22 percent no. A 2015 study of 26,000 web news articles found 54 percent were yes/no questions, with 20 percent answered yes, 17 percent no, and 16 percent indeterminate.

Question headlines

Phrasing headlines as questions is a tactic used by newspapers lacking facts to support a nut graph. Roger Simon characterized it as justifying virtually anything, no matter how unlikely, giving examples such as "Hillary to Replace Biden on Ticket?" and "Romney to Endorse Gay Marriage Between Corporations?" Many question headlines appeared in reporting of Bharatiya Janata Party in-fighting in 2004 because no politicians went on record, for instance "Is Venkaiah Naidu on his way out?"

Guides for newspaper editors advise using such question heads sparingly. Freelance writer R. Thomas Berner calls them gimmickry, and Grant Milnor Hyde observed they give an impression of uncertainty. At the Daily Mail after the First World War, Lord Northcliffe set a rule to avoid question headlines unless the question reflected a national issue. Question headlines are not legally sound for avoiding defamation; the Supreme Court of Oklahoma held in 1913 in Spencer v. Minnick that a question mark does not shield a publisher from liability for libel.

The use of question headlines as sensationalism has a long history, including the 9 June 1883 headline in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, "Was It Peppermint Mary?" The story mentioned "Peppermint" Mary only at the end as an employee who might have caused the situation and did not answer the question.