Science has recently discovered what is believed to be a planet with a star. Here is an appropriate headline about this discovery:

From Space.com "Tiny rogue planet is the smallest free-floating exoplanet candidate yet"

Now for a shameful headline:

From Livescience.com "An earth-size planet is careening untethered through the galaxy, scientists find"

Even the Daily Mail was staid by comparison to Live Science

From Dailymail.com "Astronomy: Earth-sized rogue planet is discovered roaming the Milky Way without a parent star"

Live Science is today's candidate for the Chicken Little award.

I definitely agree with you that science journalists are notorious for sensationalizing findings but the story you’ve picked pales in comparison. In fact it doesn’t seem too bad to me. I mean consider that the universe may have more rogue planets than planets in orbit around suns and yet we haven’t found too many of them. Sadly we only detect them once and then they are lost to us. One day maybe humans will detect the same rogue planet for a second time. That’d be cool. Anyway, good luck little planet.

There’s a reasonable chance a skeptic group does have a worst headline award for science news. Maybe you could check and start one if there isn’t. It’s an important thing for people to understand how News sensationalized and oversells science research findings especially just preliminary research.

Even the first article I came upon is quite good. I hear about this issue regularly on a couple podcasts I listen to.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1794697/

I was not commenting on the story but on the headline. The word "careening" means that something is dangerously out of control. The word "roaming" is more accurate and "wandering" would also be accurate but unless this exoplanet candidate is on a collision course that will be catastrophic, "careening" seems inappropriate.

I know you were referring to the headlines. I stick to my view

You definitely don't want to scare people with your headlines. That seems to be what happened with the sensational headline. I agree with @Shewmaker

I must have missed something as I didn’t read anything that would scare people. Maybe the fact that I’ve read numerous books on exoplanets/extrasolar planets and I automatically know what they are talking about.