Man bites dog (journalism)  

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The phrase Man bites dog describes a phenomenon in journalism in which an unusual, infrequent event is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence (such as Dog bites man). The news media generally consider an event more newsworthy if there is something unusual about it; a commonplace event is unlikely to be taken as newsworthy. The result is that rare events often appear in headlines while common events rarely do, making the rare events seem more common than they are.

The pattern is also described in the proverbs You never read about a plane that did not crash and You don't hear about the laws that a politician did not break.

The phrase was coined by Alfred Harmsworth, a British newspaper magnate, but is also attributed to New York Sun editor John B. Bogart (1848–1921): "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." The quote is also attributed to Charles Anderson Dana (1819–1897).

The inversion of nouns in a common phrase or cliché, as when "dog bites man" is changed to "man bites dog", has become a common trope, often used for comedic or satirical purposes.

True-life examples

In 2000, the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran a story titled "Man bites dog" about a San Francisco man who bit his own dog.

Reuters ran a story about a man biting a dog in December 2007, and the AP ran a story about a woman biting a dog

The Geelong Advertiser ran a story in November 2009 titled "Clifton Springs man bites dog to save his best Buddy" about a man who bit another dog to save his own from an attack.

As another example, reversing the myth of cow tipping, in January 2009, a cow in Boulder, Colorado, reportedly knocked a woman off her bike and stepped on her legs. The Associated Press wrote that, "It's not another instance of cow-tipping. In this case, it was the cow that did the tipping." The woman was not seriously injured. Other news sources cited the incident as the result of a "Cow engaging in people-tipping".

In 2010, NBC Connecticut ran a story about a man who bit a police dog, prefacing it with, "It's often said, if a dog bites a man it's not news, but if a man bites a dog, you've got a story. Well, here is that story."

See also





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Man bites dog (journalism)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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