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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.
Noam Chomsky's "Necessary Illusions" has a very good look at why US news media is practically useless.
Short version: the media companies have trained themselves to avoid conflict with the powers that be. The powers that be hardly need to come down on media anymore. These days if you see a news story regarding the powers that be coming down on the media - it's fluff.
Long version: it's Chomsky - you'll have to read it for yourself. Unless anyone else wants to elaborate...
The old days of naughtiness?
You forget then, about the days pre-naughtiness.
I haven't seen the book, so I don't know what history is presented in it, but the increased levels of naughtiness didn't start 'til mid/late 2000, when Fark got mentioned in Playboy.
Disclaimer : I used to be an admin (Joe) on Fark from 1999 'till about May 2000.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It's BanniNation Formed by a number of posters from fark who had finally had it with the way Drew runs Fark. It's a user-moderated fark-ish site, and IMO, has a much better community feel than fark does. It's nice being able to discuss a topic without worrying about the banstick coming down on your head.
Done
I like the topic, too bad the book doesn't seem worth anything. I started out as a Journalism major and after 2 years of that I realized how I was rewarded (straight A's) for writing BS papers 30 minutes before class that I knew were completely wrong and morally disagreeable. (I switched to CS after I realized what a joke the journalism field was.) As long as you are citing someone else for reference you can selectively choose anything to make such a bias "news" piece that it will be publically acceptable. General media isn't geared to inform objectively anymore. Capping newspapers to 8th grade reading level, selectively chosing sources, and lazy investigations about one side of the story because it's more accessible is a serious downfall. Don't even get me started on television news, somehow 30 minutes of random sound clips and bad b-roll keeps me informed? I don't think so. /.ers, is a combination of zero accountability (mods), and crappy moderators when they are in place. I have a choice in which bias opinion I watch, I don't have a location to form my own opinion without a lot more work. Add to that the network ratings are counted in thousands and a single letter coming in to the news station from a field expert telling them they don't know jack... there doesn't seem to be any insentive to even make a correction these days.
Does anyone know of accountability actions for bad/misinformed/misleading journalism?
The problem that I see in the media, that hits home to most
That's OK, people are allowed to grow and change.
And from what I can tell, it's a dead-on take on the mass media.
If we can finally break some of the spell that the media has on nearly everyone in this country, we might be able to actually make some changes and avoid the disaster that's surely ahead for us the way we're going. We might even be able to demonstrate why the whole "Liberal Media" meme is pure bullshit.
If you look at the last 5 years, and investigate the way this fucked-up administration has used the media to advance the worst possible agenda for this country, it makes your hair stand on end. All the times, for example, that the administration would leak a bogus story, which the media would run, then Dick Cheney would go on TV and say "see, the media agrees with us" because they ran the bogus story that Cheney himself leaked in the first place, and the way they've "played the refs" by convincing everyone that the entire media is part of a vast liberal conspiracy in order to get people to stop believing in facts.
"A War on Truth" is the best way I've seen it put.
The people behind Fark are more insightful than most, so they stand a good chance of being part of the solution by exposing what's going on. So the jokes aren't quite as dirty any more... Oh well.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're forgetting about all the "human interest" stories that they churn out to help sell newspapers and airtime.
Those are stories without a press release or a press conference. They mostly originate from police reports. Every local paper has a crew ("reporters" is too complimentary) whose job it is to fashion police reports into stories (if it bleeds, it leads).
The other source that I'm seen is stories that get picked up by to local newspapers that first appeared in school newspapers or club newsletters. That's where all the "nice kids", "cute pet", "interesting hobby", etc. stories come from.
I'd been on Fark for a long time, and I think it jumped after the second election of Bush (around early 2005). Before that, comments were basically a bunch of people trying to say the funniest thing possible or derail the thread with an inappropriate pic. Boobies ruled (the NextDoorNikki thread was legendary). There was a balance of left wing and right wing views, and the flamewars were hate filled diatribes with no real point except to flame the previous poster or prove the existence of God, usually by the same person, which is pretty damn funny sometimes. By the second Bush term, 90% of the comments are from deadly serious (i.e. boring) left wing people trying to prove how much Bush sucks (not that we don't already know), the average thread isn't fun at all, moderation is nuts, and the main page has so many articles on it that it ended up looking like an early version of TotalFark. Plus, the ever important Boobies disappearing had a major impact on the fun factor. Just try having fun without Boobies.