"asked" vs. "was asked" in a title

I just encountered this news heading: "All-Female Flight Test Crew Asked How They Will Cope Without Make-Up Or Men In Space"

This confused me, because I understood from the heading that the "crew asked". But according to the article, it was actually reporters in a press conference that asked the crew. Shouldn't the heading be "Crew Was Asked" accordingly?

Solution 1:

When the verb ask is used to mean:

Say something in order to obtain an answer or some information.

It is (usually) a transitive verb that requires an object.

"All-Female Flight Test Crew Asked How They Will Cope Without Make-Up Or Men In Space"

In the above example, if the how-clause were used as an object of "asked", "will" should be changed to "would" as the main verb of the sentence "asked" is "past tense".

Therefore, the how-clause is not the object of the verb "ask" and we can assume that "were" is omitted between "crew" and "asked".

In a headline, articles and the verb "be" are often omitted to save space (for brevity) because it is not that difficult to catch what it means without them.

Solution 2:

Some publications prefer not to include 'to be' verbs in headlines—but as you observe with regard to this example, a literal reading of the wording can produce an unintended (and very different) meaning in some cases.

Here, a more accurate headline would have been "Reporters Trivialize All-Female Space Mission With Queries About Make-up, Lack of Men." But for some reason, journalists hate to make themselves the focus of attention in a headline, even when the accompanying story is about little more than their own lame behavior.