news

When I was a young child I have a real vivid memory of my dad showing me the front page of the newspaper and highlighting a fact that the headline of the paper, which contained an article about his company, and the dramatic photo on front page were totally unrelated. Yet, the headline and photo were above the fold, so if you looked at the paper you associated the photo with the headline immediately. A totally intention layout by the newspaper editors to get papers bought by those glancing at them at stores or in vending machines.

The lesson he was trying to share with me was that the news will play its tricks to get you buy the paper, tune in, or (in today’s world) click on their article.

NOTE: I also regularly use this story on my dad because he’s an avid Fox News watcher which I feel masters the art of getting peoples fears spun up into their emotions.

As a person with a vested interest in the news, albeit a niche market, I am totally disgusted when I see a site that pushes the buttons of stereotypes and peoples fears in order to get someone to click a link.

CURRENT CASE IN POINT

A ‘news’ site called ‘the US Patriot’ posted an article about the families of two boys who were shot and killed breaking and entering a elderly ladies home in the Sacramento area suing the elderly lady and a family member of hers (family member was who apparently the one who did the shooting). The local Sacramento Fox affiliate has a full story on shooting, which happened earlier this month.

Here is how the US Patriot folks are getting you & others to click on their link for this article.

1. Attach an image of bunch of young black men to the article for Facebook to pick up on. This will scare the crap out of people and probably piss off some folks who think it is a travesty that black families of thugs are suing an elderly lady. If you had a line up of pretty white boys smiling, this article wouldn’t get nearly the amount of clicks to their ‘news’ site. A sad and tragic truth.

2. When people are on your site, have some other image of a group of black youth that could be construed as a gang in order to get people to click on the article and stay on your site. Your amount of page views will help to boost your advertising revenue. So do whatever you can to get the visitors you have to stay on your site. I don’t care to go surfing the internet for a photo, but I would wager a bet that this photo is actually some stock photo you can buy.

All this, when in fact the boys were caucasian and far some threatening mugshots or gang photo.

I would love it if our culture didn’t respond to stimuli such as this, but even in this article I have a headline that might capture some fear based attention. Not my intention, but I realize it’s possible. Blatant disregard for truth and transparency in reporting about the news is a gross injustice to humanity and sites like the USPatriot should be marked off peoples list of credible sources for anything.

Reminds me of a plea from Jon Stewart on Crossfire, “Please stop”. These sites are bad for America.

received word the other day that one of my high school buddies was taking a team of doctors down to haiti for relief efforts. there was quite the bit of news coverages because, since our time in high school he's been able to wedge into the media market place. i saw another news article where a number of children who were up for adoption to american families were rushed to their pennsylvania homes with the political people showing smiling faces as if patting themselves on the back.

no slack on my friend & his medical team, they will do a lot of work and a lot of good work i am sure. but it had me wondering. slight slack to the political players who lord over visas and all these international adoptions.. it had me asking, "why now?"

sure, there was an earthquake & it is devastating, but long before that, there was extreme poverty & suffering… where was the anderson cooper's & media police alarming us to the worlds ills? chasing tiger woods?

i share my thoughts to say this one thing. as you are compassioned to give to help with relief efforts, give to the people who were already there, because, they are most likely to be there long after everyone is gone.. and they will be dealing with the aftermath of not only a physical earthquake, but a systemic poverty.

this is why i am so pleased to say that i am a part of the united methodist church & its continued work under the UMCOR banner. they were there before the earthquake, sadly some died in the earthquake, and will be there long after the earthquake. i applaud & more with the folks at highland park umc who have kept a long standing clinic in haiti since the 70's, but lost one of their church members in the earthquake.

learn more about the stories happening in haiti, long after the news vans leave & continue to help those who will be there long after cameras turn off and go home.

visit: www.umc.org/haiti

Fear Based Clicks

CURRENT CASE IN POINT

give to who was there, because they will continue to be there : desparate times in haiti