The Media Overdoes Irrelevant News

On Oct. 15, families across America were shocked by what they were watching on the television screen. What they discovered, three days later, was that they were watching a floating fraud.

Falcon Heene, a 6-year-old from Fort Collins, Colo. was allegedly inside a huge “UFO” balloon while the object drifted 2,500 feet in the air. Richard Heene and his wife Mayumi called 911, explaining that they were certain their son was in the balloon. Major news networks canceled their scheduled programming and watched a helium balloon drift across the Midwest for an hour. After the mysterious gray objected landed, authorities searched inside for the young boy only to find nothing.

Falcon was discovered hiding in his attic, leaving the anxious media dumbfounded. Of course, the topic needed to be covered further.

CNN’s Larry King interviewed the family the following night, where Falcon revealed his reasons for hiding and caused a controversy.

“You said that we did this for a show,” proclaimed Falcon when his parent’s asked why he was hiding from them.

Nothing like a good Hoax.

Two days after the three-hour flight, Mayumi Heene admitted to Larimer County investigators that she and her husband had “lied to authorities” when they called the police to report the “missing” Falcon. Richard and Mayumi had told all three of their children to lie to the media and police to keep up appearances.

While I, along with the people of the Denver Airport whose flights were canceled because of the hoax, are upset that the media covers an offbeat family for more than three hours, I’m more thoroughly disgusted at the family themselves. Richard Heene exploited his son to promote their episode of ABC’s "Wife Swap." He then allowed his sick child to be interviewed and now anyone and everyone can view Falcon vomiting publicly on national television (you should look it up, on youtube.)

He forced his kids to lie to the police and had thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans worried about Falcon’s future. What people do to be on reality TV shows how truly pathetic our society has become. Who cares about “John and Kate Plus 8” being canceled? Why do we cover Lindsay Lohan filing restraining orders on her parents? By giving these people hours of coverage everyday, news medias simply makes them stronger until they reach the point where the entire story is irrelevant.

The term "fifteen minutes of fame" in the modern world should be replaced with “hours of irrelevant news clogging the television screen.”
With that being said, I leave you with a great SNL skit.