Sat 26 Jan 2008
The vivisection of what makes news into a CNN headline.
Take a tragedy: Five people die in a car accident. And slowly massage the words. Five people die in a BMW accident. Five people die in a BMW accident off an elevated airstrip. Five Killed When BMW has Accident Off Elevated Airstrip. “5 Killed When BMW Flies Off Elevated Airstrip, Hits Top Of Tree”. That’s where the local news station took it. I can still basically understand that a tragedy took place when a car drove off an elevated airstrip.
To fit the CNN profile, we need to go further: 5 Die when BMW flies off elevated airstrip. And finally “Five die when BMW flies off runway.” How creative. CNN chooses the funny little pun about “flying off” and “runway.” Cute little word trick to capture a little more attention to a story where five people died. Trivialize the accident and get a few more readers curious if this was a flying BMW and how it would fly off a runway. The local affiliate uses a similar play on words but at least calls it an elevated airstrip so the crash makes a bit more sense in context.
And this is how we are informed from one of the main sources of news in our country. They take their solemn duty of educating our voting populous lightly. There are many less sensational stories that we need to learn more about, and that we can do something about. For example, hospital-acquired infections kill nearly 100,000 people annually in the US. On average that’s 273 dying each day — or 55 BMW accidents daily. CNN making this a priority could literally save thousands of lives a year just by cutting that number by 2%. If they replaced all Spears/Ledger stories with this, that wouldn’t be difficult; they could give it a Fox slant like “The War on Dirty Hands”.
CNN. We are listening. Choose your news wisely.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Yes the play on words is actually causing some to believe that this was an intentional act.
And, in turn, has caused some to leave some pretty distasteful comments.
One thing I would like to know is, who are the 3 unidentified men.
This looks like a case of murder to me.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Amen brotha. But how dare you proclaim that the world doesn’t need to know about the “wedding ring found in fudge” or “tiaras and butt glue” found at a local pageant? Butt glue can save the world too.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:37 am
HA…I wouldn’t be surprised to see CNN spin that one into…”Bio-Terrorism unleashed on US Hospitals!–CLICK FOR VIDEO”
January 28th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Oddly enough CNN has outdone itself today.
Although the Suharto death (and subsequent immediate entry into hell) and perhaps the simultaneous deaths of the Greek Orthodox and LDS (Mormon) heads all on the same evening aren’t HUGE stories (although the coincidences make a neat story). CNN pulled a whoppper with this one about plastic bags:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/01/27/bolduan.plastic.bags.no.more.cnn
(be careful its a video)
Leave it to CNN to allow the plastic bag industry to give “their side of the story”.. Although the comments at the end were impressive about reusing.
Then the follow up story on Firing All teachers in Chicago. First of he blatanly sets up a conflict “on the one side…..” and then could you find two people with less ability to be public speakers. Jaysus!
Oh, and there’s the all important wild elephant running down some tourist.
James