Lost of Trust on the Media

Open up the e-mail news sent by CNN and you will find an article regarding the case of Megan Meier, the teen girl who hung herself in the closet because a phony boy told her that the world would be a better place without her. Perhaps, if you check my last entry on the subject (it was some days ago), you'll see I quote the New York Times (I remember because I misspelled it "New Jerk"), where "Josh Evans" was a product of Lori Drew's imagination. Something like her very own "Harry Potter" (save the wizardry), who would do her work at avenging Megan's mean behavior against her daughter. There was a whole unfolding about the bittered up relationships between the Meiers and the Drews, something like a Montescue and Capulet family rivalry going on.

Today the CNN talks of this matter and now Josh is no longer Ms. Drew's but something like a collective character, who's password went from hand to hand through a number of people who toyed with Megan. It speaks of several teens mistreating her through the façade of Josh, and an 18-year-old woman typing the deadly words "the world would be a better place without you". There's also some other information (the Spirit of Rugby knows where the paper got it) that gives a new light to the role of her parents in the fight. And I quote:

When Megan's mother returned home, she found her daughter crying at the computer. After reading the messages, she criticized her daughter for using inappropriate language, Banas said.

Telling her mom that "I can't believe you're not on my side," Megan ran upstairs and hanged herself, Banas said.

How does the Prosecuting Attorney, Mr. Jack Banas knows that? Then, how can the Meiers blame the Drews when they themselves didn't help their kid?

But this is not today's topic. Today's topic is the need for "sensationalism" in the media. It seems is no longer the accuracy of the information what matters, but the scandal in it, the impact in the reader. Matters such as the dropping employment rates, the eroding fo the wages, the ever growing levels of poverty world wide, the corruption in the Government and other power entities. Hunger is not as striking as Britney Spears' bald head or a crying Lindsay Lohan. Who cares for the debate over the war budget? So what if it has rose disproportionally in the past years when you can either be clicking at Paris Hilton in jail? Now, what's the truth about such a puntual, small matter as Megan Meier. Not like the suicide of a teen is dismisable, but fuck it, compare it for a moment with the teens and preteens KILLED in war? Pulled into suicide bomb missions, starved to death, worked to the bone, forced into prostitution. What's the death of some personality challenged teen compared with the kidnapped kids sold out as slaves for pedophiles, for child pornography and child prostitution? Well, all that is sad, but it's not "sensational", and therefore it's not "selling". Besides, such things can be counterproductive because maybe some smuckety-smuck has a Mongolian child chained to a cage in the basement for his or her own amusement.

Then again, if the elections come, papers rub their hands together because then everything is about the newest gay senator or lawmaker. Who has the dirtiest, most illicit-sex-stained file. Mark Foley, Larry Craig... who else is there to trash? I am not a Republican, the Spirit of Rugby forbids! but I find it utterly distasteful to attack people based on such superficial, personal matters instead of targetting political positions, decisions, work capabilities and such. Sure Mr. Foley did wrong by targeting teens as his potential sexual partners, even if he never did anything actually physical with them (though then again, if he wasn't having sex with them, and the guys gave their consent, I really don't see the harm. No pictures asked, no actual sex, just flirting... these kids already do that with their peers). Sen. Craig... really, how can anyone really say he was cruising? Okay, he plaid guilty and that makes him look guilty. Yeah, I notice the cynism in it. He wasn't even soliciting, if that was his intention. These men weren't underage, so what was the harm of it? Two consenting adults.

BUT it's sex, it's gay, it's "in the closet", it's forbiden, it's dirty and brought forward. The media wolfs on the unprotected vulnerable victim, leaving behind nothing from a defiled carcass, reducing human to a bundle of shame that will have to seek live under a rock in order to escape the stigma. No it's not a matter of them seeking out this, it's a matter of the media taking on meaningless weak points, human features that make these men HUMAN, and exploit them, make them everybody's business, debase them meanwhile ignoring the facts that, not that extraordinay and catchy, do affect the lives of many.

Yes, the truth is inconvenient, but more than that, it's boring, and boring doesn't sell. How in the fucking HELL can be two versions (if not more) so different from a same fact? No investigative reporting. Nobody really cares for the truth, because truth is nobody really cares for the death of Megan Meier. Megan is just a bone to get the juiciest story regardless of how real or not it is. People will after chose which version they like the best and declare it "truth". And the colapsing markets? The housing problems in New Orléans? So the poor "niggaz" who survived the flood can't rent a place where they used to live because no one can pay those prices. Well, they are poor or black, so who cares? Send them to Mexico, after all, the US is getting all the "excedent people" from the Mexican's right? Let's have the Cajuns and Sin Citizens populate Juarez, León and other places down there, right? They are not Hillary Duff, so who cares about them? The Government doesn't so why should the press?

This is the world in which we live today, and I'm deeply ashamed and disappointed on it.