The headline on the CNN.com splash page was big and exciting and sinister and appalling: Police use stun gun on 6-year-old boy (!!!)

Wow. I mean, every other day we hear about some outrage or other, and this header was designed to conjure jackbooted thugs in riot gear raining some righteous technosmack on a defenseless first grader who had probably done something un-PC like praying during recess. How could you not click through to the story?

And there you learned that a (troubled, one assumes) kid had freaked out, broken a picture frame and cut himself with a shard of glass. He was wielding it like a weapon and threatening to hurt himself some more, and the police had been unable to talk him down. So they subdued him with a tazer shot (not a stun gun, by the way – minus a letter grade for the factual inaccuracy) to prevent him from slashing himself even more. They then rushed him to the hospital where he could be treated.

All this info is in the story, a very different story from the one the tasty, splashy headline seemed to promise. Damn – I feel cheated. You mean the police acted appropriately and did it to help the boy? That’s hardly interesting at all.

If you put a gun to my head and told me that I had two minutes to find a case of gratuitously bad journalism or you were going to shoot, I’d immediately hit CNN.com. I might not find what I needed to save me, but I’d sure have a better chance than I would a lot of other places. I don’t see why it has to be that way, but the simple truth is that CNN cdan be counted on to embarrass itself every day or three.

And there’s nothing I can do except call them on it and maybe offer a suggestion. How about this headline idea instead: After all other means fail, police use tazer to save troubled child who was in danger of inflicting serious injury on himself…

So it’s longish. You’re a feckin’ CNN editor – tighten it a little. But please, in the morning when you get to work and set your agenda for the day, how about putting “get it right” above “pander and titillate.” That’s not asking much of America’s premier online news source, is it?