The Cincinnati Beacon
Lazy Enquirer can’t even get pornographic headline right
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
In today’s Enquirer, a headline reads “Cops admit sex in cruiser.” That’s one way to attract attention, perhaps, but there is a problem: no where in the story does it say anything about cops having sex in a cruiser. It appears that whoever writes headlines for The Enquirer didn’t even take the time to carefully read the piece.
The paper has spent some time this week highlighting how the Cincinnati Police Department has had officers engaged in pretty foolish behavior—like playing video games instead of patrolling the streets—so from that perspective a story about cops having sex in cruisers is timely. Unfortunately, the story is based purely on innuendo about two adults’ private lives, and it includes no details which justify the headline.
The opening sentence seems to support the headline, but only upon first glance: “Their favorite place to have sex while on duty was in the woods behind an Ault Park maintenance shed, but they also continued their affair in police cruisers when they were supposed to be protecting the public.” However, a closer reading of the whole article shows that the couple really continued their affair in police cruisers by using their computers to flirt:
Rensing told investigators she and Dunagan had used the mobile computers in their police cruisers to flirt - often with openly sexual content - and to arrange to have sex while on duty.
A police audit of messages Dunagan and Rensing sent each other over those computers confirms much of her story.
“Included in the communications ...were numerous transmissions involving sexual innuendo ... and other inappropriate non-law enforcement-related transmission,” the report said. The man involved in this affair had a great quote in the story, which raises a pointed question: “‘Affairs go on all the time in this world. It’s not newsworthy,’ Dunagan, 45, said Wednesday, declining further comment.”
Indeed. What we have in this story is one ex-cop saying her and her lover had sex on duty, and the still active cop saying they had sex, but not while on duty. The Enquirer offers no additional insights one way or another, but their headline writer sure knows how to make a sexy statement—unfortunately, however, there is nothing in the story which makes sense of that headline whatsoever. Just our daily paper of record using sex to sell so-called news.
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