Summer of the Random, Improbable Scary Thing

The BBQ Pit
1

What the fuck happened to journalism?

Last summer, we were saturated with headlines of gruesome shark attacks. Consequently, idiots avoided beaches in record numbers. Once in a while, you’d see a small article or op-ed piece rationally stating that the number of attacks was actually a bit lower than in previous years. Those sensible articles didn’t sell papers, though, so they were usually relegated to small spaces near the back of the paper, cluttered among advertisements.

Now, of course, it’s the Summer of the Children Abducted by Strangers. Never mind that that this highly-unlikely scenario has been on the decline for four straight years and is on par for a fifth. That’s irrelevant. Little Janie that would have been a pictureless blurb on page A-16 last year is now the subject of a haunting, full-color picture on the front page and banner headlines.

The sharks are surely attacking people again this year, but they’re forgotton, tucked away in the same corner of the paper that last year featured a tersely-worded AP bulletin about another poor little Janie. The sharks are boring now. Next year, Janie, too, will probably be relegated back to her old place beside the Lasik Eye Surgery ad.

The sad fact of the matter is that a child is abducted by a stranger roughly once every three days in this country. It’s not a phenomenon that’s on the rise and it’s not big news because it happens all the time and doesn’t directly affect a large number of people outside the community in which the crime was committed. Sure, a kidnapped girl should generate big headlines in the Paducah Post if she was kidnapped from Paducah, but she shouldn’t be smiling at us from the front page of USA Today.

This post is in no way meant to insult or poke fun at those affected by child abduction. I don’t have a kid myself and can’t even begin to imagine how awful it would feel to have a child taken away from me, but it’s just not national news.

There are a lot of terrible, painful things that happen in this country (and around the world) every day that aren’t news. The statistic was reported about a month ago that over 40,000 Americans died in automobile crashes last year, but that quickly slipped right off the page at all the major news web sites, and, of course, failed to spawn wave after wave of articles on safe driving techniques and procedures like the ones we’re seeing now on how to protect our children from becoming one of the hundred-or-so abductees.

All I really want to know is why the fuck do we need news “fads?” Apparently the technique must be selling papers, but it’s emotional manipulation, not real news. Newspapers should be sold with the intent of educating readers on worldy affairs and local events that affect them, not pulling on their heartstrings or frightening them with unlikely scenarios. We already have a forum for that. It’s called Reader’s Digest.

2

Well, on the plus side, when you’re getting sick of hearing about…

O.J. Simpson
Robert Blake
sharks
Chandra Levy
terrorism
kidnapping
whatever

… you can reassure yourself, “It’s okay, in a few weeks, the media will be on to some other ridiculous thing, and beat THAT to death.”

3

I had a disturbing and cynical moment at the movies last night. There was a preview for a new movie about a “perfect family” whose child is abducted. I seem to recall a lot of the character development in Minority Report was based on the lead character’s abducted child. Could it be the news media is just being used to make movies more interesting? I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, really.

4

I feel similarly about the West Nile Virus. Watching the local news would lead you to believe it is going to kill us all.

Number of deaths inside the US from the West Nile Virus for 2001: nine.

Number of deaths caused by influenza inside the US for 1999: 1,665.

5

neutron star, you rock.

I’m watching CNN and wondering why we have to sit through live shots of people scouring Ward Weaver’s property for human remains when we should be hearing more about the Middle East. What I can’t understand is why CNN cuts away from a debate over a potential war with Iraq, that could affect tens or hundreds of millions of people internationally, to talk with a reporter with an “important development” in the Oregon missing teenagers case. Turns out the “important development” was news that an autopsy was completed on the second set of remains and that results would be issued shortly. So the “news” was that there would be “news” within a couple hours. Why the hell was that necessary?

Not to suggest that murdered kids are unimportant, but news organizations should have some sense of perspective.

6

I think it reached a new low with coverage of the Jason Priestly Racecar Crash. Live press conferences with his doctors in Kentucky? Reporters asking anxiously if he would ever walk again? Come on.

7

wow, you guys (all) really pegged it!! This touches on a similar but related beef of mine, which I’ve been stewing on for quite some time.

[partial hijack]
I’ve worked late on most days over the past year, but on a few occasions I’ve managed to get out at a reasonable hour. So I run home, flop down in front of the TV for some Quality Couch Time before making dinner – And what do you see on the evening news: THE SAME SHIT, ON EVERY CHANNEL.

What I’ve observed, is that if you start your day by catching just ten minutes of news on TV or radio, you’ve got all the news you are going to get that day.

In the evening it seems worse: Watch just a few minutes of the news on any channel (or, hell, just their ads/trailers), and you’ll see the same shit repeated on every channel - this has rendered even the simple act of channel-surfing a boring & pointless exercise. (no wonder I’m reading more, nowadays…)

Sure there’s local/regional stuff going on, but TV/radio, whether local or national, both seem to be feeding us all the same crap. HELLOOOO news media, quit catering to the lowest common denominator! Quit playing to our collective, nearly-non-existent, attention span - which YOU could influence, by the way - and give us some real news! We’re NOT morons, so quit treating us like that!! :mad:

[/partial hijack]

8

I am with you all the way neutron star. As the husband of a CNN junkie, I have ample opportunity to see fear-mongering, emotional manipulation and just plain irresponsible reporting every day.

I am afraid that the short answer is: The war is over, the $ has won. The crap does indeed ‘sell papers’ millions if not billions. We now live in the age of ‘News for those who will buy more crap’.

I used to think that if enough people stopped watching/buying papers/listening to radio (at least those ‘news sources’ that practice fad journalism) it would stop.

Unfortunately, it appears that the demand for this kind of dreck is just too high…even my old stand-by NPR is starting to get in on the act.

I avoid most of it now just for my own limited peace of mind…I figure if it really matters to me, either the junkie will tell me or it will hit me over the head.

You rock dude! It needed to be said and you said it well.

9

Dammit someone beat me to the Jason Priestly thing.

I totally agree, and in fact I was thinking about this very thing last week. It is sort of a bizarre phenomenon.

10

If by we you are referring to the bulk of americans, then we are certainly morons. The media only gives the people what they want.

11

Turn off your TV.
Read a quality newspaper.
Bookmark the New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Yahoo and the Guardian.
Listen to NPR.

12

That’s all well and good Flowbark, but your news snobbery doesn’t help me in the least. I can’t get local news in your elitist system. I either have to turn on the TV, or read the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (which recently did a three parter on “protecting your pets from West Nile” even though dogs and cats can’t even contract the disease). I don’t consider the AJC a quality newspaper.

13

Is the increased child abduction news reporting a fad, or is it a result of the Amber Alert system?

14

Working in the media, I can warn you well ahead of time: next summer, the fad will be “sharks abducting little girls.”

15

Eve, please get the fad committee to rethink this. “little girls abducting sharks” or “abducting little girl sharks” or “girls abducting little sharks” would be much more fun to know about.

16

I was just thinking the same thing myself last night, neutron star, while the local news showed as much footage as possible! of the house in Oregon where the remains had been found.

Well said! The media is focusing attention on the two Oregon girls right now, while there have doubtless been several abductions/murders of children in the meantime. Any abduction is tragic, any child murdered is dreadfully sad and a crime. But no, the media focuses on the fad of the moment, and everyone else gets short shrift.

There were no fewer than 9 murders described on that news broadcast last night, many in grisly detail. But of course, while the Oregon girls got at least 5 minutes at the top of the broadcast and a bumper “update” at the end, the other local deaths were lucky if they got 30 seconds of talk time apiece. Yup, that’s fair. :rolleyes:

The state of American journalism, especially television journalism, is simply down the tubes.

17

i have a question. I have read like six stories of babies getting left in cars this summer. Is that on the rise or is it a “news fad,” too?

I would be all for reporting every instance of it if I thought it would keep other people from doing the same stupid thing, but that doesn’t seem to be working.

18

Alternate view: The Media feeds us what they want, and we’ve got little other choice, save stop watching at all (I’ve done that, for a year and more. Amazingly liberating!).

19

I was watching the news a couple of weeks back when Samantha Runnion’s body was found. They played the tape of the 911 call the man who found the little girl’s body made. It was chilling, to hear this man in hysterics because of the horrible, horrible thing he had just found. I am not in favor of playing 911 calls on the news, but I would have let that one slide – except that they played the exact same clip four more times in the show. Four more times!

This is why I get my news from The Daily Show.

20

That’s ok. You can’t get local news under a nonelitist system either, unless you consider footage of yet another “3-alarm blaze” to be “news”. (Heartless flowbark does not: he considers stories like that to be “shmooze”.)

An investigation into fire department policy would be another matter, of course.

I suppose my solution to your local news difficulty would be 1) a nonquality newspaper, 2) the local freesheet, should it exist 3) the local public radio affiliate and 4) (of course) the internet.

But you already knew that.