…and here’s my second cautionary tale about professional expert journalists writing things, the first one being here.
2. Media expert Ray Heard demonstrates his great journalism expertise
Let’s analyze the absolute crap out of something just like Ray Heard does on Sun News Network, several times a day, tearing this or that apart, often yielding utterly nothing as a result.
Here’s a tweet, leading to the question How could you fall for this crap?
How could you make this up? –Palin Wonders If Malaysian Flight 370 ‘Flew Directly to Heaven’ http://t.co/pPKHeMawo6
— Ray Heard (@RayHeard) March 25, 2014
Answer: you fall for that crap when (as I’ve demonstrated), you have an obsessive hate-on for Sarah Palin, as Ray Heard does. “She’s bimbo,” to quote Heard precisely.
It doesn’t look like Heard is clued into the fact that the story is total BS. It’s satire.
An urban myth.
- FAKE NEWS: Palin Wonders If Flight 370 ‘Flew Directly To Heaven’
- Palin Wonders if Malaysian Flight MH 370 ‘Flew Directly to Heaven’ is Fake; Sarah Palin Satire Goes Viral
The expression usually used is “You can’t make this stuff up,” so I’m inclined to think Heard didn’t even get that part right, asking instead, “How could you make this up?”, because everybody already knows how media can make crap up. Especially about Palin and other conservatives they hate.
It would almost pass as simply good humor if Heard linked to the story at a satire web site — TheOnion.com, or something like it, as a benevolent gesture so we could all be in on the fun. But he linked to codewit.com, a supposedly serious, non-satire, “real news” web site. By the way, they reprinted the farce, in full, with no byline, no source/author credit, and no indication of it being satire. Now that’s some good journalism, right there! Good source, Heard!
Have we blathered on and on and on about this enough yet? No! More now!
Ray Heard isn’t known on air for his spontaneous comic wit. He isn’t a jokester on Twitter either. I don’t think he did, but let’s just say he did know the BS story was in fact satire, and that he’s then merely joining in like a good old boy and smearing Sarah Palin as some sort of a joke we would all “get” and enjoy. Because smearing good, innocent people — is always a great joke. If so, well that’s just fantastic. It’s not the mark of a serious journalist. It’s the mark of a hack. But at least we got to blather on and on for minutes on end about nothingness.
@RayHeard Did you know that this story is BS/satire? You're a news man, no?
— Joel Johannesen (@JoelJohannesen) March 25, 2014
He never answered me.
Ray Heard, a liberal media expert, didn’t bother to engage his journalism expertise to investigate the veracity of the story. Or worse, he did.
That is all. Now back to more important things.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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