Ci talk:1013270730
MoE's definition for 頭條新聞 is 刊載在首頁版面的第一條新聞。 [1] So it's a news story (新聞), not a headline (标题）.
Similarly, the definition in Wu Guanghua, ed. 《汉英大词典》 is "headline news" (not "news headline").
Examples:
也和中央通訊社談妥了每日供應頭條新聞， "They had also talked with the Central News Agency about setting up a daily headline news service, ..." (What would be the point of a news agency supplying only the headlines, without the stories?)
六月初，聯合晚報一版頭條新聞指出，職棒投手郭源治的女兒遭歹徒綁架，但不久就獲釋，歹徒並勒索贖金一億元。 "At the beginning of June, the United Evening News ran a headline news story stating that pitcher Kuo Yuan-chih's daughter had been kidnapped by gangsters, and then quickly released after the payment of an NT$100 million ransom."
職棒六年開打，晚間頭條新聞就是球賽實況， "When Taiwan's professional baseball league began its sixth season, TVBS's lead stories were about the games."
一位華裔父親因為打了女兒一巴掌而遭到美國警方逮捕，成了報紙頭條新聞。 "In the United States, a Chinese father was arrested by a policeman for slapping his daughter. It became headline news." (Note that New Century similarly translates the phrase 成为报纸的头条新闻 as "be the top story of the paper")