It’s all for the show, by Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia – Pop Art… and Chris #46

October 20, 2009 Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia 0 Comments

Dear Art & Chris,
Our network had a bit of a problem this week. We were taken in by the now-apparent hoax perpetrated by Richard Heene and his family. We, along with the rest of the mainstream media, were taken in by the claims that six-year-old Falcon Heene was trapped in a runaway balloon. It turned out the boy was in the garage. How can we repair our damaged reputation? Also how many news cycles can we get out of reporting that these guys are frauds?
-Jonathan Klein, President, CNN

Jonathan,
Your complaint seems to be that you’re terrible at your job and now people know it. Editor and Publisher, the authoritative journal covering the newspaper and news industry in this country, contends that no one ever raised the question of whether a balloon of that size could hold a six-year-old (looks like no). During the 911 call reporting the event Richard Henne claimed that the balloon generated a million volts on its surface every five minutes putting Falcon in danger, this was also completely false. We know that you guys have science correspondents, were they all sick that day? You guys did all the investigative reporting of a blogger copy-pasting a press release.

Now that the “crisis” is over every major network is reporting that it was a hoax. Your job was to report it as a hoax while it was happening. Instead you gave us 90 minutes of uncut sensual balloon action. Now you get to waste further time discussing if it was fake. While this is going on there is actual news still out there. I hear there’s a health care bill nearing a vote. If that balloon hadn’t come down yet there would be nothing on TV by this point. Hundreds of channels just devoted to this balloon. We were probably only a few hours away from a tribute song. It could have been by Lady Gaga, who has had a helium-balloon-like rise to prominence but is sure to have an equally quick descent.

This incident has blurred further the line between news and reality television. This was a group of attention whores creating artificial drama to promote themselves. You fell for it. Or is this what you wanted from the start? We’re not sure what you can do to restore your credibility but it doesn’t help that Wolf Blitzer spent a large portion of Saturday night enlarging and shrinking the balloon on your “magic wall.” A good start would be if you could go a week or two without The Daily Show serving you your ass for lunch. To answer your other question probably 3 more cycles. More if this goes to court, I smell a “Trial of the Century” brewing.