I found this on graphic on Tumblr. The creator of the image can be found here: http://bestrooftalkever.tumblr.com
I know this is old news now, but it is a reflection of mainstream media. The discussion of “balloon boy” came up in one of my communication classes a couple of days ago and I feel it is worthy of blogging about. It’s interesting to see what Mainstream Media (MSM) considers newsworthy. Last semester I took a class specifically on broadcast journalism, where we covered topics like this. What do you consider newsworthy? My professor brought up a key point on how you should decide on what is newsworthy. You need to decide what is the most revelent and what will be most impacting to the viewers in your veiwing area. Someone from the Burlington area is not going to care about a robbery that took place in a small town in Alamaba. However, new laws regarding hunting season in Vermont will definitely be a story to cover. “Balloon Boy” was a local story, just like the small Alabama town robbery was. Some news stories are meant to be local breaking news stories, as was the case for this. This in my opinion, did not warrant countrywide media attention that some of the MSM networks gave it. One of the important lessons from this, is to “fact check” that source. By doing this, you avoid looking silly as the media did in this case. If a little more research and fact checking went into the story before airing, then may be the MSM would not have covered – seeing it was indeed a hoax. Fact Check, Fact Check and Fact Check!
