Journalism Warning Labels

American Blogger Cubachi finds an item from across the pond which, while geared for consumers of British media, could easily be adapted to serve colonial media customers as well.

Warning labels for the legacy media — an idea whose time has come.

British comedian Tom Scott writes:

It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.

I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I’ve been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.

As Cubachi writes, “This is Awesome:”

Something tells me the Anchoress would get lots of use out of that last sticker. You can download a PDF file of the labels Scott created from his Website; enterprising Photoshoppers should easily be able to modify these to more American-friendly versions.

Cubachi adds:

I think other labels I would add would be, “Palin Derangement Syndrome ahead,” “Warning: Journalist drooled while writing this article about Obama,” and “This paper is knee-deep in liberalism.”

One PDS label coming up:

And meanwhile, this one sort of creates itself, huh?

Meanwhile, CNN’s studios might need an entirely different warning label all together.

(And yes, you’re welcome to use the above two labels; but we’d appreciate it if you credit and/or link back to where you got them.)

Update: I kind of liked the “Juicebox Mafia” subtext of the JournoList warning label, but a commenter suggests, “Instead of a juice box, the Journolist label needs a pitcher with a face, suggesting Kool-Aid.”

Fair enough!