Considering the events of the this past weekend, I thought it a good idea to start out on the topic of Balloon Boy. I kept up to date on all of the events that transpired around "Balloon Boy," from the breaking news coverage during CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, to the revelation by the sheriff of Larimer County, CO that the whole situation was a hoax Sunday morning.
As the news broke on Thursday, CNN was the only major network covering Balloon Boy. CNN broke the story in the early afternoon and didn't leave it for at least two or three hours. I tuned into MSNBC and Fox News at around four o'clock to see if they were covering the footage but all I saw was the usual mug of Chris Matthews playing Hardball with someone and Glenn Beck ranting about God knows what on their respective networks.
My question is, how do you think the media handled the situation? The media, namely CNN, played a huge part in revealing this situation to be a hoax. Is this a pseudo-event that received too much attention when other issues like the Pakistani war against the Taliban could have received more air time? Or was it necessary to spend hours reporting this story?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6UONWCq7A
ReplyDeleteCheck out this link of Wolf Blitzer's interview with the Heene family that revealed the hoax, that is, of course, if you haven't already seen it.
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ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia (who, after all, apparently is a credible enough source for CNN as we learned last week when CNN used the site as a source which falsely quoted right-wing conservative, Rush Limbaugh, as being a racist...) a pseudo-event is "an event or activity that exists for the sole purpose of the media publicity and serves little to no other function in real life. Without the media, nothing meaningful actually occurs at the event."
ReplyDelete...So yes, I think balloon boy is a good example of a pseudo-event. But I think calling a story like this a "pseudo-event" even gives it too much credit. Who really cares about balloon boy?! Why is this newsworthy for the nation?? I don't think CNN should have, nor anyone outside of a 300 mile radius of the event, spent more than 3 minutes talking about this story. I think ANY news media would be much better served to spend time covering almost anything other than this story. Discredit CNN for wasting several hours "breaking" this story on Thursday.
I totally agree with you, Matt. I thought CNN wasted a lot of time on balloon boy. They should have probably just had five minute updates every hour, based on the human interest of the story. I must admit that I was concerned when the story first broke, but time was lost that could have been spent on more prominent stories.
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