By now we are familiar with the story of the boy in the balloon, a gripping tale that has literally and figuratively taken the nation "by storm." I was on lunch break from work when I saw a large group of people crowded around a small television in the deli, and felt forced to share in the experience. I happened upon the coverage at the critical moment, when the flying saucer was landing and America stared on in morbid fascination as they slowly realized that the boy was nowhere to be found, and likely had fallen out somewhere along his 1,000 mile journey into the skies.

The story was indeed captivating, but what is more interesting to us as media criticism students is the aftermath of the event, and what it says about about our current media climate. In an interview with Larry King Live shortly after the event, the "boy in the balloon" Ryo, was asked why he didn't answer his father's calls after hiding out in a box for several hours. He very candidly responded, "You guys said we did it for a show." blowing the lid off of a massive publicity stunt leveraged by a family that revealed themselves as "Wife Swap" contestants and a massive media whores.

The crux of the issue, is that in our current advertising supported model of news, the stories that get the most plays are the ones that tug at the heartstrings of America. These stories do not need to be fully factual, and they don't need to be important, they just need to pull viewers in and support the interests of the network. The fact that we could let this story go on as long as it did, when a simple scientific calculation could have easily verified it as a hoax, goes to show that the media can no longer be relied on as an intelligent source of information. Instead of informing the masses, the news media has retreated to simply confirming our hegemonic ideas (Fox News) or purveying pulp that keeps viewers in an effective "buying mood." These are the reasons I get all my news from the internet, but I sincerely hope I can come back once the system collapses upon itself.