Comments on: Balloon Boy is your fault

By: Lee Jones

Lee Jones — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:51:52 +0000

What you said, Otis; what you said.

Regards, Lee

By: emme

emme — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:20:49 +0000

I was on vacation when this happened yet still heard about it. How could I not? We had stopped for a beer at a place with wi-fi. My first reaction was, “Yeah, right”. We saw a photo of the balloon and it did not seem feasible.

Later, when in the hotel, we again saw the story but now it was a circus. They were now fashioning the story to support the theory that this homemade flying saucer could actually fly away with Falcon (priceless).

What I see here is a media desperate for a sensational story, law enforcement tripping over themselves for “face time”, and children being abused by their parents. I can tune out the media and LE but not the fact that these children were misguided and manipulated by their parents. Where’s the public now? Why are they not outraged about the treatment of these children?

By: Short-Stacked Shamus

Short-Stacked Shamus — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:00:16 +0000

Recently read an interesting piece by Lakshmi Chaudhry from a couple of years back called “Mirror, Mirror On the Web” which seems to make a similar case for how destructive this yearning for fame — particularly as facilitated by the ‘net — is to our culture.

If yr innersted: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070129/chaudry

By: CJ

CJ — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:59:11 +0000

Oh, and for the record, my station lead with the Balloon Story at 5pm CT… but at that time, the boy had still not been found.

By: pokerpeaker

pokerpeaker — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:51:44 +0000

Otis, I definitely agree with your response to my comment. Reality TV is the worst kind of entertainment. It really reminds me of paying $1 to watch a girl diddle herself behind cracked glass.

By: otis

otis — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:33:04 +0000

If anything, I have people with valued opinions talking about it. Which is nice.

By: Jay Greenspan

Jay Greenspan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:17:00 +0000

The last line of my previous post was unfortunate. What really frustrates me is that given the available choices, people opt for the crap.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:27:45 +0000

Jay-I don’t think anyone mentioned WSJ or NPR. It seemed to be pretty specific to cable news and network news (Today show et al.). You are right that NPR and many news papers are doing a good job of covering the stories of the day. From your last line I would say you are frustrated about the same news outlets as we all are.

By: Jay Greenspan

Jay Greenspan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:15:33 +0000

There’s a sense in many of these threads that the news media is totally broken. Bullshit. Total and complete bullshit. While these may be the worst of times in many respects, these are also the best of times, with a number of outlets providing outstanding coverage of the important stories of the day. And finding the good work isn’t hard, you just need to be in the market for it. For example, I think the diversity and quality of reporting on the financial crisis was something the media could be very proud of (WSJ and NPR, in particular).

One reason the reaction to this story hit me particularly hard is that I was engrossed in some in-depth articles on the state of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I challenge anyone to read the entirety of George Paker’s article on Hollbrooke and Afghan policy (15k words) and not get frustrated over the media handling of balloon boy.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:34:18 +0000

Brad. I know you would fight against banning books and music etc. However, your cause to versus incentive to be an idiot and do stupid things argument is semantics. Either way you are blaming the medium instead of the people. People have done stupid things with or without a camera since the dawn of time.

No one has to watch Reality TV, and no one made you watch the balloon boy news coverage instead of doing something productive. I think you feel duped and ashamed that you got sucked into the TV coverage of balloon boy and now you are trying to find someone to blame so that it isn’t your fault.

And StB, the Amazing Race is the best reality TV shows out there, feel no shame. However, watching Tool Academy makes me want to mock you for some reason.