Today, I can't help but be bothered by Joran Van Der Sloot. It seems to me like the whole thing is blown out of proportion, considering how many other people are murdered in the world, daily.
Let us briefly go back in time, shall we? To a time, five years ago, when a slow news day brought us the story of a kidnapping in Aruba which was picked up by the major 24-hour news networks. First of all, if the kidnapping had involved young, 17-year-old Sofia Lopez-Rodriguez of Houston, TX, this news story would have never been brought to our national attention. But no, this was the kidnapping of young, beautiful Natalie Holloway, a white, blonde girl from Mississippi. Sad, but true. So the news networks picked up this story and made into a national sensation, like they have a tendency to do. Because Americans love a good mystery, especially a true story, or at least based on a true story, America fell in love with the story. Joran Van Der Sloot was suspected of the kidnapping and/or murder of the young girl, but charges were never brought upon him because of lack of evidence, if I'm not mistaken. American went on with it's life, moving their attention to another story soon enough.
Flash back to the future, back to the present, and Joran has allegedly struck again! GASP! I wonder how much BP paid Joran to kill someone in Peru?
An estimated 520,000 murders were committed globally in the year 2000 alone, according to Wikipedia. To choose one alleged murder in Aruba in 2005 to slather all over the news networks for weeks, and then do it again in 2010, because of the previous incident, seems a little retarded to me. Americans get caught up in the stupidest shit. Not saying that the murders aren't sad, as someone has lost a life here, but Joran Van Der Sloot is just one of many bad, bad people in the world, and it's crazy that our nation, and a portion of the world now, have been caught up in this whole mess. It's news networks looking for ratings, while the public just needs someone else's life to focus on instead of their own, and the people watching have no idea they're just witnessing a ratings grab. The fact that I know this much about this one murder/disappearance is a testament to how much coverage there has been about these two stories. I have deliberately tried to avoid coverage about the stories, yet I'm well informed about a subject and a killer that I need not be.
It's just a payday for the networks, to gain ratings, to sell advertising. If you don't see that, you are blind.
(and I was really talking to myself yesterday about making this blog more slanted towards comedy, then I drop this depressing bomb on y'all. WHOOPSIES!)
I use google news for news a lot since it pulls from all English language sources for its aggregation, and works well on the phone, but the problem is that the order of stories are computer generated and this algorithm is driven by the amount of buzz around a story, so if some wild celebrity/gossip thing happens, it will be the top headline. (That was a long sentence!) So I pull it up the other day and it says "Joran van der sloot kills someone else " is the top story and that really bothers me. My preference for news stories is directed by their relevance to my personal life, which sounds kind of egotistical, but if something is about to affect me, like my favorite restaurant closing, or a new bill that got passed that will dump a pile of money on my desk, I'm going to want to know about it before I hear some gossip story that doesn't apply to me at all. I'm not turning CNN or HLN on to get entertained.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course it's all about ratings for the networks. The idea before was that the various wavelengths of RF transmission belonged equally to everyone as a public good, and as a result any television station that had a broadcasting license had to devote some of its resources to public service. You can still see some instances of this like school closing reports and incessant weather coverage and (rarely) investigative reporting, but acting in the public good has declined gradually. I can't blame someone for wanting to make a buck however.
Lately I've switched over to the NYTimes mobile site because they have articles with some substance and editorial control over article placement.
Exactly my point! I been reading the Huffington Post, here and there, and they seem to do a good job,my only problem with them is they seem to be more opinion when reporting on something. As far as reading news, or watching news, you just kind of have to have a filter for the bullshit. Sometimes a bit of celebrity gossip is alright, as that's what I'm used to at this point, but not as a main headline.
ReplyDelete