'Al-Qaida' hijacks Cyprus plane

This story is pretty old, technically, but it was just a matter of time before al-Qaeda got mentioned.

The hijacking itself is not why I'm posting. Notice the quote marks in the headline. That's goodness.

Hijackers claiming to have bombs and to be members of al-Qaida today hijacked a Turkish passenger plane heading from northern Cyprus to Istanbul.

The hijackers had asked that the plane be diverted to Iran or Syria, but the pilots landed the plane at Antalya airport, near the Mediterranean coast, chief executive of the private Atlas-Jet airline company Tuncay Doganer said.

Most of the passengers managed to escape from the rear exit of the plane while the hijackers were releasing the women from the front exit, one passenger told private NTV television.

The reason the quote marks are important is because one passenger said the hijackers were al-Qaeda whereas a second passenger said the hijackers did not make an announcement about who they were.

So there you have it. Two diametrically opposed witnesses and the reporter went with one of them. And the most dramatic one at that. The person writing the headline obviously read the story first.

Shoddy reporting, but good headline writing.

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