Newspaper headlines are not captions!

I have repeatedly listened with disdain, English radio and television press review presenters and those who claim to be super journalists as well as editors, confidently, though unconscious or better still ignorant, refer to newspaper headlines as captions.

Last week, a Douala-based TV presenter said: “Those are all the English captions we have today,” intending to refer to the day’s headlines of English language newspapers, while her colleague of CRTV national radio in Yaounde noted that “Another newspaper… captions the story as…” It is even more disheartening to find such a lackadaisical error in a newspapers’ corrigendum: “In one of our stories captioned…”

Such an awful blunder could be acceptable from the general public, but it is unacceptable and even horrendous when such gaffes are made by journalists who pride themselves to have been trained (or taken crash courses) in the Advanced School of Mass Communication, ASMAC Yaounde; the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, JMC of the University of Buea; the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, NIJ Lagos; Saintou University in Yaounde; National Polytechnique Bambui, and so on.

However, as I was told during my teen age days of catechism, “Anyone who loves knowledge wants to be told when he is wrong. It is stupid to hate being corrected” - Proverbs 12:1.

So without fear of being chastised by my senior colleague, Peterkins Manyong, as “those buffoons who want to be journalism teachers,” I am convinced it is my social responsibility to make a succinct distinction between the two words – headline and caption.

Going by the Merriam Webster dictionary, a newspaper headline is the title of a story or article usually printed in large type and giving the gist of the story or article that follows. Headlines can go without any picture, unlike captions (also known as cutlines) that accompany pictures or illustrations. In essence, captions are a few lines of text used to explain or give additional information about photographs in a newspaper or news magazine.

If my print journalism-related university courses such as basic news writing, photo journalism and advanced news writing & editing, do not fail me, then a caption appears under or by the side of a photograph while headlines appear on the top of the news article.

Never has the appellation of newspaper headlines and captions being juxtaposed in the history of typical Anglo-saxon journalism and until when captions will become headlines, media practitioners should desist from confusing issues with conventional professional words.

Whatever the case, there is no harm in departing from a mistake that seems to be ingrained in the system of many practitioners like blood cancer. After all, the once considered second most influential psychotherapist in history, Albert Ellis and one of his first collaborators, Robert Harper, posited in their book, A Guide to Rational Living, that by honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.

It wasn’t a lecture session, but a worthwhile intervention. So I rest my case, God being our helper!