My two cents on #balloonboy ... er ... #garageatticboy and the empty balloon

To recap, cable news ran hours of live coverage of an empty weather balloon floating around Colorado, telling us a 6-year-old boy was inside, when said boy was hiding in an attic/storage space over the family garage. Either a 6-year-old and his brother just punked America and its cable news stations, or maybe more of the family was involved. Every time an anchor said that what you were watching was a balloon carrying a boy, they were wrong. Their source? A kid. Brings to mind, and not in a good way, "And a little child shall lead them." What should have just been either a scary family afternoon or a misguided publicity stunt uncovered or ignored "ballooned" to a national crisis.

Police said that in searching the house, they didn't search the garage attic space because they didn't think the boy could get up there. It's always the last place you look, isn't it? Look, I get that the cables have more time than important news to cover and stories to tell, so it falls also to consumers to be wise in their media consumption.

Always consider the source

This applies to politicians, salespeople, the media, almost anything. Whenever anyone is telling you anything, consider why they are even talking to you -- what are their motives? what do they want? -- and place what they say in that context. And specific to news and this situation, when anyone said "There's a boy in a balloon in Colorado," what was their source? Whether you heard about it on twitter, Facebook, a website, or on cable TV, the sources trace pretty quickly back to a little boy who said he saw his brother get into the balloon. From the pictures, I don't see how/if anyone can even actually get in to it, but based on that kid, whether or not he was coached/compelled by his parents to tell the story, local authorities and TV stations took up the chase/broadcast, none of them with any valid information or confirmation of the story more than the story of a small child. The true story wasn't worth anyone's time, attention, emotion, prayers, etc. Think about it: not one honest person over 10 years old could say, "I saw a boy float away in a balloon" as producers and "journalists" broadcast hours of footage of an empty balloon afloat.


I find the metaphor of the empty balloon non-story compelling. After hours of hype, emotion, and breathless coverage, there was no "there" there, as I think often happens with all the media outlets fighting for our attention and their existence. "A Democrat disagrees with a Republican!" "Obama's the best!" "Obama stinks!" "You lie!" and all the same catchwords: communism, socialism, racist, etc. are tossed around, but is there any news in them? Most times, I find that there is not, and I think we'd be better off to have never heard a lot of the tumult, or to disregard or ignore it. Now, there is actual news out there, things we should hear about and know. While I don't want/need the White House to decide who is and is not a valid news organization (are they unbiased? they gonna call out biased supporters of theirs as well as biased critics?) I would agree with the White House that there is a lot of bias out there, and it can be a challenge to sort out what information is actually valuable and valid.

As I watch the ALCS right now, I think that's one reason I like televised sports so much: it's happening, it's there, from various angles, and then it's finished and someone wins and someone loses, usually with minimal controversy. Almost all of the relevant action is very well covered as it happens, without photoshopping, fakes, or spin. Leagues and fans battle steroids and cheats and such, but when we see something happen, it actually happened. We're seeing the games pretty directly from the source. Now, where we've let money gain too much influence, sports also suffer: see college football's B(C)S, baseball's lack of a salary cap, etc., but each televised game is still pretty straight. And really, between yesterday's balloon coverage or any of this weekend's sporting events, which would you rather watch?