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It's Not News, It's Fark
"In It's Not News, It's Fark, Drew Curtis takes a critical look at the mass media. He promises to examine why the news is often not news at all, to look at the fear mongering, the cyclical nature of the news and the fluff that is passed off as important. Drew breaks down these not-news stories into 8 separate categories and gives examples, along with user comments from Fark. Unfortunately, 230 of the books 278 pages (including the index) are used for these examples. What time is spent talking about the media and the advertisement model it is built on, is insightful a bit cynical and very brief." Read below for the rest of the review.
It's Not News, It's Fark How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News
author
Drew Curtis
pages
278
publisher
Gotham Books
rating
6
reviewer
Robert Rozeboom
ISBN
978-1-592-40291-5
summary
A look at why the mass media puts out so many stories that aren't really news.
The book starts off with a brief Fark history lesson. What Drew did before Fark. Its first incarnation and how it got to be what it is today. The author then gives us an outline of the different types of news stories that he considers not newsworthy. Drew points out that since most news is brought to you by an entity that makes its money selling ads, the more eyes watching those ads the better. History has shown that nothing attracts eyes like fluff, fear and stretching the truth. There is a reason why there are so many tabloids in the checkout lane.
The first type of news story Drew covers is what he calls, 'Media Fearmongering'. Everything from finding bacteria on your keyboard, terrorists in your home town to animal attacks. This is the most easily recognized type of non-story.
We then move on to, 'Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article'. This includes most surveys, new words in the dictionary and all things publicity stunt related. Everything you'd read in the 'Lifestyles' section of the newspaper.
Next is, 'Headline Contradicted by Actual Article'. Misleading headlines to outright lies are addressed. Drew makes the point here that the people who run these stories often realize that they are misleading at best but know that they will generate traffic.
'Equal Time for Nutjobs' covers Noah's ark being discovered, conspiracy theories and a guy who thinks the garden of Eden and Atlantis are in Florida. The crazier the claim the better.
Then we have 'The Out-of-context Celebrity Comment'. Why do we care what someone who pretends to be someone else for a living, has to say about Nuclear proliferation? Who knows but we sure do.
Drew next looks at 'Seasonal Articles' . The amount of money lost due to a fall in productivity because of the Super Bowl, inspecting your Halloween candy, and traffic spikes during holiday weekends. All of these stories should look familiar.
The next chapter is, 'Media Fatigue'. How do you know when a big story has just about run its course? Wait for the stories about whether or not the media has given it enough attention or if they've gone too far.
'Lesser Media Space Fillers' covers everything that couldn't fit into one of the other categories as well as some of Drew's personal observations of what type of stories tend to get the most coverage.
Each one of the chapters has a collection of Fark comments after every example story. The comments seem to be chosen at random and are frankly extraneous. The only reason I can think of to include them is that someone in marketing wanted to tie the book more closely to Fark.
The final chapter of the book is by far the most interesting to read and only 14 pages long. This is the wrap up of the problem as Drew sees it and what he thinks the mass media should be doing instead. His ideas are well reasoned and in my opinion spot on. As long as the media is driven by advertising they will walk the line of responsible, informative journalism and outrageousness as close to outrageousness as they can and still be taken seriously by a majority of consumers.
My criticism of this book is that almost the whole thing is just a list of Fark stories. If you've read Fark you've read 90% of this book. It would have been more interesting if the book was an actual discussion of the shortcomings of the mass media, why it is in the place it's in and what could be done to change it. Those topics are covered but in such a brief way that they almost seem like an afterthought.
If you like reading Fark and for some reason you want to read a collection of Fark stories and a few comments in a non-computer screen format you will love this book. If you want to read about how the mass media works and some thoughts on how it could be better you'll love 50 pages of this book.
You can purchase It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The first type of news story Drew covers is what he calls, 'Media Fearmongering'. Everything from finding bacteria on your keyboard, terrorists in your home town to animal attacks. This is the most easily recognized type of non-story.
We then move on to, 'Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article'. This includes most surveys, new words in the dictionary and all things publicity stunt related. Everything you'd read in the 'Lifestyles' section of the newspaper.
Next is, 'Headline Contradicted by Actual Article'. Misleading headlines to outright lies are addressed. Drew makes the point here that the people who run these stories often realize that they are misleading at best but know that they will generate traffic.
'Equal Time for Nutjobs' covers Noah's ark being discovered, conspiracy theories and a guy who thinks the garden of Eden and Atlantis are in Florida. The crazier the claim the better.
Then we have 'The Out-of-context Celebrity Comment'. Why do we care what someone who pretends to be someone else for a living, has to say about Nuclear proliferation? Who knows but we sure do.
Drew next looks at 'Seasonal Articles' . The amount of money lost due to a fall in productivity because of the Super Bowl, inspecting your Halloween candy, and traffic spikes during holiday weekends. All of these stories should look familiar.
The next chapter is, 'Media Fatigue'. How do you know when a big story has just about run its course? Wait for the stories about whether or not the media has given it enough attention or if they've gone too far.
'Lesser Media Space Fillers' covers everything that couldn't fit into one of the other categories as well as some of Drew's personal observations of what type of stories tend to get the most coverage.
Each one of the chapters has a collection of Fark comments after every example story. The comments seem to be chosen at random and are frankly extraneous. The only reason I can think of to include them is that someone in marketing wanted to tie the book more closely to Fark.
The final chapter of the book is by far the most interesting to read and only 14 pages long. This is the wrap up of the problem as Drew sees it and what he thinks the mass media should be doing instead. His ideas are well reasoned and in my opinion spot on. As long as the media is driven by advertising they will walk the line of responsible, informative journalism and outrageousness as close to outrageousness as they can and still be taken seriously by a majority of consumers.
My criticism of this book is that almost the whole thing is just a list of Fark stories. If you've read Fark you've read 90% of this book. It would have been more interesting if the book was an actual discussion of the shortcomings of the mass media, why it is in the place it's in and what could be done to change it. Those topics are covered but in such a brief way that they almost seem like an afterthought.
If you like reading Fark and for some reason you want to read a collection of Fark stories and a few comments in a non-computer screen format you will love this book. If you want to read about how the mass media works and some thoughts on how it could be better you'll love 50 pages of this book.
You can purchase It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Very true. After the site changes Fark stinks like rotten dog breath.
The redesign is ugly. Load times are (still) twice as long as before the site change (back-end fixes my rear end!). Fark isn't what it was 1 year ago, and that's a bad thing.
Although it's rare for a first post to be on topic, this one is. "It's a trap!" refers to the statement made by Admiral Akbar in Star Wars and is a catchphrase often employed on Fark.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
My first thought when I saw the redesign was that they were trying to look like Digg.
// Can I use Slashies on /.?
My main reason for not reading Digg is that it is goddamn ugly.
Good job there, Fark.
Every single change that they've made in the past 1.5-2 years has been for the worse.
/ Has not gotten over it.
I was an avid Fark user since 2001. I will no longer even hit the front page, as they have neutered Fark and alienated many of their loyal readers by instituting a new ban system without informing people what it was. Pictures that were *always* considered "safe for work" (such as the attention whore girl, are now deemed NSFW, and posters are banned without explanation. As one poster here has already mentioned the whole "you'll get over it" redesign was a bit of an odd approach, but I could live with that, what I cannot live with is the extra crappy censorship they have rolled out. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, as I loved visiting the site because it was a small bastion of free speech. Now they have chosen to eliminate that, fuck 'em.......
"wants the government to regulate free speech and the media"
??
You obviously are thinking of another Noam Chomsky - or you're off your meds. You have also obviously not read the book. Chomsky has no love for the US Gov and is against more gov regulation.
At least try and do some Googling before you post.
Chomsky isn't a communist, he's an anarchist, as he's said numerous times.
And he's still smarter and better informed than any right winger.
I couldn't guess why you say it's any less (or more) naughty than it ever was.
Seen a Boobies link lately? Not on the main page you haven't.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Chomsky describes himself as a "a libertarian socialist", whatever that means."
Libertarian Socialist
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Fark Boobies links went to Foobies.com, in contrast to this, the SBB Girls ads they put on the standard (i.e. non-Total Fark) mainpage became bigger and closer to being work-inappropriate content. Don't know if this is still the case. I haven't checked Fark since the awful redesign.
I would have to agree.
We formed bannination.com where we can have lots of naughtiness and moderate ourselves instead of having someone making all the calls.
The man is brilliant, and what he has to say is completely relevant. He has one of the most insightful analysis of modern society I've ever read. I challenge you to come up with an example of him being a nutjob. In fact, I think that you know he isn't a nutjob. I think that what he's saying challenges your beliefs, and you don't want anyone being swayed by what he has to say. If he were a nutjob, that fact would be obvious to everyone, and you wouldn't need to mention it. I mean, who bothers to mention that the Timecube guy is a nutjob? We all know it from one look at what he has to say. Not so with Chomskey, which is why small minded defenders of the status quo always feel the need to attack him.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Uh oh, the cat's out the bag. Fark used to be a fun diversion, then they went for the buck. DIAF.
You've fallen victim to an inside joke. See here. Scroll down to "I work for."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
my first thought when I saw the redesign was that the programmers there don't really grok XHTML. They totally went about it the wrong way. You are supposed to think about data streams and then later use css to style it. But Fark's programmers clearly thought about presentaion only, and tried to make the data stream fit the layout they wanted. Along the way, they ended up with inline styles, extra useless divs, etc. The whole thing is just very awkward. They obviously aren't geeks.
And no, that isn't meant to flame them. IT's just my humble opinion. That site is so big now that they should be able to do better. All drew had to do was to ask his millions of users to help out. Hell, even slashdot had a css contest.
What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream
From a talk at Z Media Institute June 1997
By Noam Chomsky
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday's version to today's version. There is a lot of evidence about what's played up and what isn't and the way things are structured.
My impression is the media aren't very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion--there are some extra constraints--but it's not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.
You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you're lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn't mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.
Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part--trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.
Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times--people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class--they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.
The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow's New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you're an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don't have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don't want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that's what the New York Times tells us is what you're supposed to care about tomorrow. If you
http://use.perl.org
The current place to go instead of Fark is http://bannination.com - A site created and populated by folks who were fed up with the shadowbanning, catering to the advertiser's whims and other assorted bullshit that was starting to pollute Fark. Bannination also has a lot of features that completely outshines how things are done on Fark with the best features from many of the common news aggrigator sites... plus a few nice unique twists as well.