I was working out at the gym on campus. Forgetting my I-pod, I had to plug my headphones into the treadmill to watch TV. I tuned to BREAKING NEWS ON CNN about a young boy who disappeared and was thought to have been floating around in a home made hot air balloon over Colorado! I was at the gym for an entire hour while CNN talked about poor little Flacon, the boy who got in his father's hot air balloon. However, soon enough, the balloon landed and was found empty!! Where was Falcon?! Search and rescue teams swarmed the area and almost every other channel's daily news covered the story. So many times CNN announcers said, "Lets just hope that he's hiding in his house somewhere, and is afraid to come out and be punished" and what do you know...that's what DID happen! Or, kind of. I got back from the gym and turned my TV on at home.
Details of the Heene family started to surface during the search. They family had appeared on the reality show Wife Swap before, and the father was a professional storm chaser with a website. The Heene's were known for "living life on the wild side".
Eventually, Falcon was found hiding in his attic. Soon after, interviews with the Heene family surfaced and something funny happened. The entire event was ruled a hoax! It turns out that Falcon's parents told him to hide in the attic and when he was interviewed by CNN later, Flacon gave up the secret. When asked why he didn't come out of the attic when he heard his father calling him he said, "Um you guys (his mom and dad) said we did this for the show."Leave it to a young child to tell the truth.
Here's the actual CNN interview with the Heene family when Falcon spilled the beans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6UONWCq7A&feature=player_embedded
But the Heene family are not the only ones to be blamed in this situation. The media plays a large role. First it was breaking news and all over the media. Then, as the story was ruled a hoax, even more coverage was given. Try searching "Ballon Boy" on Twitter. After your first result, guaranteed within 2 seconds 60 more posts will surface and you'll have to refresh. The story spread through social media like a wild fire. Everyone was talking about it, and it ended up getting more attention than it deserved. America could just not get enough of the sick and twisted hoax the Heene's pulled.
The whole situation escalated into something that makes me sick to even think about. Have we really gotten to the point in our society where the best way to get attention, is to fake a missing child? Not only that, but it seems as though social media is just a freak show! We as American's love these kind of stories, and we eat them up. But this has to stop. Instead of blogging out a hoax, lets blog about more important things. There are plenty of educational blogs out there, whether political, international, environmental, etc. If we paid more attention to the stories that matter, I think our country would slowly fade from the reputation we have earned. It's no wonder the Heene's were chosen to be on Wife Swap in the first place. When we have families that are willing to waste the selfless efforts of search and rescue teams, police officers, and more because they knew that the media would easily grab the story, we've really got a problem on our hands. The Heene's should be ashamed of themselves, but I have a feeling they're not. They got the publicity they wanted, and even though it's not good publicity, they're infamous. Does this seem right to you?
By the way, the Heene's are going to court:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8315042.stm
4 comments:
I was actually going to blog about this situation. This is a perfect example of free publicity, something the Heene family obviously won, even if they say that was not the intended goal. I find it interesting that the media would jump all over a case that ended up reflecting poorly on those that badly got the facts wrong. What does this say about the federal involvement? Is it lacking considering the house was not checked first?
I couldn't agree with you more. It is ridiculous how people like this get away with these kinds of acts. If you think of the world of media you get journalists, public relations practitioners, advertisers etc. who are all held responsible for incorporating ethical standards in their field of work. They are all bound to being truthful in the news and the messages it sends to the public. When they breach any ethical standard you can be sure that they suffer as a result of it. My question then is how do we react to a situation like this when a family is being deceitful in order to relay the information? They should face repercussions. Sure, the family is looked down upon by the public but they still got the attention; maybe not the exact kind they were striving for but none-the-less it was attention. It is not like they will suffer as much as a newspaper company might when they lie. I feel like the only way to repress people from engaging in acts like this is to enforce some kind of punishment. What could that be though?
I think this is absolutely ridiculous. People like these parents are honestly pathetic, and will do absolutely anything for their 15 minutes of fame. To create a situation in which their child is "missing" honestly is just sad, and to not even cover their tracks makes the situation even worse. The media makes the situation that much worse because they fed into the situation. I mean, it seems obvious to me that the house would be the first place to check, not a hot air balloon that seems as if it would be almost impossible for a child to get off the ground himself. To me, this story shows just how far people will go to get fame, and that the media will take at face value a situation that was clearly not even an issue at all.
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