John Rentoul, writing in the Independent and the Huffington Post UK, wants you to know about his new book coming out just in time for Christmas. Here he focuses on newspaper headlines:
Many of them were picture questions, with a bias towards aliens and monsters. "Is This Atlantis?" (The Sun, February 2009.) "Is This the Monster of Lake Windermere?" (Mirror, February 2011.) "Is This a Squadron of UFOs Flying Over California?" (Daily Mail, May 2011.) "Is This a Secret Space Station on Mars?" (Mail Online, June 2011.) "Is This an Alien Spacecraft Parked Next to Mercury?" (Daily Mail, December 2011.) "Is This Life on Venus?" (Mail Online, January 2012.) Most of those could have been entitled, "Is This a Speck of Dust That Has Been Magnified So Much That It Looks a Bit Like Something Else?"
Any picture that included anything that could have been a blurry human-shaped figure would be headlined "Is This Bigfoot?" or "Is This Finally Evidence That Bigfoot Exists?" Or "the Yeti".
One of my early favourites was "Is the Turin Shroud Genuine After All?" a lovely question in the Mail on Sunday in April 2009, especially for that highly-collectable "After All" at the end, which brilliantly implies that the Mail on Sunday knows perfectly well that the shroud is a fake, but that some startling new evidence has come to light that suggests that the fruitcakes had been right "all along".
[ . . . ]
The collection now has 882 exhibits, the best of which are selected for a book published in time for Christmas by Elliott & Thompson.
(Bold emphasis mine)
I think this is just being used as vehicle to express veiled hate.