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Boultinghouse: News we'll never forget

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By Trent Boultinghouse

Friday, October 30, 2009

Welcome to the National Museum of Extremely Important Media Stories. I’ll be your tour guide today. This section of the museum is reserved for our recent additions.

Here we see talk show host David Letterman apologizing to his wife and network for his sexual encounters with former employees. Fortunately, for those of you who missed it, you can still read about his wife’s reaction in any news outlet’s top stories for the next month.

When you press this button, you can hear Kanye West interrupt Taylor Swift’s award acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. We needed a lot of airtime for this story, and thankfully our pals at all the major networks were able to help us out.

We haven’t quite finished the next room. It’s serving as storage for all of the Michael Jackson documentaries that aired this summer, which reminds me, I need to watch all of those TiVo hours of Jackson specials so I can get into the pop culture loop.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m getting a little nostalgic. It still amazes me how important these stories were in this 2009, and I’ve yet to factor in the Balloon Boy hoax.

Did I see some of you look disgusted when I said these stories were important?

Well, what would you rather see covered on the news, the “War on Terror”? Please. Everyone knows that Afghanistan and Iraq are symbols from a previous era. There isn’t anything new going on over there besides death. And who wants to hear about that? Unless, of course, the death in question is that of a pop singer.

The economy? Yeah, yeah. It’s bad, but what can I do about it? I’m just one little citizen in a country of millions. Never mind that the national unemployment rate hovers close to 10 percent — its highest since the Great Depression. Next year, after I graduate from college, I’ll be fine.

Health care? I’m 21. I won’t even be thinking about health care until I’m at least 70 or 80. Even then sounds a little too soon. Why do I care about what the proposed plan is? That is something my parents and grandparents need to worry about, not me. So what if the San Jose Mercury News found that one out of every three adults ages 18-29 have no health insurance?

Do you have a question, sir? You’re saying that these are issues my generation needs to address? Well it’s not my fault. I can’t control what the television news presents to me. If CNN wants to report on Balloon Boy, that’s what I, as the viewer, have to watch.

But you’re saying that doesn’t matter? You’re saying I should be proactive in my search for relevant news? That maybe I have a responsibility to inform myself on the important issues of the day?

Well, fine. You can think that. Have fun reading about your boring health care plan. In the meantime, I’m going to go watch “The Insider.”

— Boultinghouse is a sophomore in journalism and history.

Comments

Geiiga (anonymous) says...

This is what we get for letting news go from something provided as a public service to a for-profit service provided to advertisers.

If you want to see how bad it is, look at what happened when Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, reporters for a Fox affiliate in Tampa, did a story critical of Monsanto. They were made to water it down three times, then were fired when they refused to lie. After winning the jury trial, the appellate judge sided with FoxNews, saying that news organizations were under no obligation to tell the truth. Beats losing out on all those Monsanto advertising dollars, doesn't it?

November 2, 2009 at 5:33 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

pantheon (anonymous) says...

It's too bad there's not some sort of interconnected network of computers that people can research information on. Where you can, like, point yourself at any important issue and get almost all the available information on it.
Oh well, back to reading fmylife.com

November 2, 2009 at 11:16 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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