TheLoop21.com

By: Keli Goff (Add to your loop)
Tue, 10/27/2009 - 08:01

'Balloon Boy' was hiding in his attic and the media paid the price for the hoax.

It wouldn’t be the first time that members of the media have been accused of being asleep at the wheel, but the coverage of the so-called balloon boy story (officially dubbed a hoax by authorities) might be the first time in which the entire industry is accused of committing the media equivalent of driving under the influence. (As a member of the media myself I know I’m opening myself up to accusations of pot-calling-the-kettle-black, but this is one instance in which being asleep at my keyboard, saved me from being asleep at the wheel, journalistically speaking. I was feeling under the weather and subsequently out of commission for much of the balloon boy brouhaha).

There appears to be varying degrees of finger pointing, from those blaming the parents of said boy of the equivalent of child abuse to those simply blaming the media for not only getting the story wrong but wasting so much airtime on a non-story to begin with. Some media critics are touting balloon boy as a watershed moment, the day when major news networks became indistinguishable from your average reality show. But for those making such accusations I wonder, what else was happening in America that day that could have possibly been more important than covering the made up story of a boy carried away by balloon?

Let’s see, in the 24 hours in which the nation was obsessed with balloon boy:

•  7,000 American students (yes—seven thousand) dropped out of high school.
• 153 Americans became infected with the virus that causes AIDS and 38 people died from the disease.
• 109 American women died of breast cancer (October is breast cancer awareness month).
•  49 Americans died because of a lack of medical care related to their lack of health insurance.
•  3 American soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, giving their lives in Afghanistan.

Now that we're years into the conflicts in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, I’m sure the families of the men and women there must feel at times as though they've been forgotten by the media and the public at large. So with that in mind, I would like to take a moment to actually mention these three soldiers by name: Specialist Anthony Green and Sergeant Christopher Rudzinski, both aged 28 and Staff Sergeant Chris Staats, aged 32.

By choosing to breathlessly follow a boy in a balloon, and to abandon a presidential press conference on rebuilding New Orleans four years after the Katrina crisis to do it, the media made it crystal clear what constitutes a crisis worthy of coverage in this country. Is it any wonder then why a recent study confirmed that nearly two-thirds of Americans don’t trust the media?

How can they? When we’ve finally made it clear which stories and issues really matter—and what it takes to achieve celebrity in America.

Apparently it is not achieved by serving your country.

It requires a balloon.

Keli Goff is a political blogger for TheLoop21.com. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, March 2008). She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and previously served as an editorial contributor to RushmoreDrive.com. Keli can be seen regularly on national news programs including Anderson Cooper 360, The CBS Early Show, Lou Dobbs and BET.

Should we continue the war in Afghanistan?

Yes, for our own safety

Maybe, but it won't do any good

No, it's a lost cause

I don't know

It doesn't matter what we think