Actually (WSJ alum here) our long-ago training was to lead the story with the percentage change in net income, no matter what. The assumption was that in a congested world, that was more likely to be the most useful metric. And it was a simple, easy-to-find number.

Focusing on net income was meant to keep inexperienced reporters from being bamboozled by IR/PR departments that sometimes went to crazy lengths to find something positive in the midst of a crummy report. (One tech company with dwindling sales, profit and market share liked to talk about its strong cash position.)

Of course, that was in the days before up-to-the-second updates on after-hours trading. So now reporters know the market's verdict within a few minutes of the earnings release. That leads to financial-results stories that hunt for something (earnings? revenue? next quarter outlook?) that explains the stock movement. In this environment, different metrics get different levels of prominence all the time.

I wouldn't burn up a lot of energy coming up with conspiratorial reasons why reporters pick different numbers. Inexperience and confusion usually are the simple reasons for 90% of strange decisions. This is probably true in a lot of areas.

Cry wolf enough times and you just start getting ignored though. I can't say I ever click on any Business Insider or the Verge articles anymore regardless of title.

It would be awesome to have a reference list of examples to demonstrate how twisted headlines from major sources really are. Any come to mind?

Verge has anti big tech bias. anti amazon anti Tesla, anti anything or anyone that is big and successful or rich.

Really? I'd say the opposite. They love tech. That's the bread and butter of what they cover. Any anti-articles are due to the fact that that is almost all they cover.

The Verge and other Vox publications definitely do push an anti-tech angle is it's digestible by the populace.

This only makes sense of people who do enough research to realize it's false information. A lot of people just care if the headline fits their own narrative.

If people would ignore fake news, we wouldn't have so much misinformation issues, people biting the onion and flat earthers.

Not usually -- most of these articles end up being consumed very quickly after publication, so A/B testing wouldn't yield any actionable data.