Yahoo! Blimp Crash Lands in Ohio
by Stephen Cox | Posted November 02, 2012
My home page is Yahoo! There are reasons for this, some of them good, but all of them dull. I won’t bother you with them. I simply want to notice that the recent college graduates, college dropouts, high school students, and GED pursuers who select and headline the featured articles that run on such digital substitutes for newspapers are even more grossly bigoted than the New York Times.
And that’s saying something.
Here is a selection of recent Yahoo! News headlines:
“Romney on ‘Apology Tour’”
“Did Romney Play It Too Safe?”
“Obama Rattles Romney”
“Romney Blimp Crash-Lands”
Reporting on the most hotly contested “battleground state,” at the moment when it had become still more hotly contested, Yahoo ran this as a headline: “Mitt Romney Still Hasn't Given Up on Ohio.” If you clicked on the headline, you would see this at the beginning of the article: “Seeking middle-class and women voters, Romney intones ‘change’ mantra in Ohio."Can anyone imagine such a site featuring an article in which Obama intoned a “change” mantra?
The old journalistic rule was “dog bites man — not news; man bites dog — news.” The digital clones have it the other way around. No one expected Romney to give up on Ohio, but that’s the headline: he didn’t give up. Meanwhile, Yahoo! found no room for headlines about the shockingly daft response of the Obama administration to the massacre in Libya, or to anything else that might bring the administration into question. There was space, however, for a headline about a Democratic senator in quest of reelection: “Mother of Mo. Sen. McCaskill Dies at Age 84.” Yes, that is the news the nation must know.
There’s no limit to this crap. On the day when tropical storm Sandy struck the east coast, a Yahoo! headline read, “People Named Sandy More Likely to Give to Obama.”
Stephen Cox is editor of Liberty, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include "The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison" and "The New Testament and Literature."
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Comments
Franklin
It would be fascinating research to chronicle the journalistic style, prevarication, equivocation, and wile, of the media shills throughout the last two centuries.
Now citing Yahoo, of course, is “shooting fish in a barrel.” Or perhaps it’s better to say “in the political tank,” since they parade systematically with the other Obama sycophants at Huffington. In fact, they’re happy for the coverage, Stephen. It is odd, however, that as they wear their celebrity blinders down on their sleeves, they still are unable to see. Yahoo is but an outlet for children (of all ages, of course).
You’re looking for political or economic analysis? Get real. You might as well ask them where “money” comes from.
On the other side of the pond, dead soldiers and ambassadors? Hey, far away; no skin off my nose. Those are shrug-of-the-shoulders, “Ah, that’s a shame” moments.
The unemployed? Hey, that’s a symptom of bad Bush management from years ago. In fact, there’s lots of fodder for your news-watching eye today; the headlines are about all these newly-created, part time, fast food counter jobs (sorry; the “part time, fast food, counter” adjectives were my own). It’s all Swiftian in a way, since 7.9% is higher than 7.8%. New math maybe for the news editors who probably shout, “Stick to the fast foo--, errr, sorry, stick to the newly-created jobs number!”
With Yahoo, I mean, what would you expect? But please forgive this tangential frustration of mine; I’d like to welcome you to my meeting. Time to come clean. “My name is Franklin, and I’m a recovering Yahoo-homepage addict…”
A long time too. But then my morning coffee was becoming so bitter, so unpleasant, Pavlovian even! After a while, grabbing a coffee downtown, or sipping java after a serene dinner experience ushered in a foul mood, without even looking at a laptop screen. Time for a change, so I ensured my homepage was my own business’ page. Forces me to scroll bookmarks when I want to jump to entertainment or sports or news about dog-biting men.
Perhaps you should do the same – maybe make it your University’s web page, or some libertarian outlet that features your celebrated works.
Would do wonders for your peace of mind.
Fri, 2012-11-02 13:58