Blog 6

This blog is actually regarding last week’s blog topic of the news since I used the wrong subject matter last week. In chapter ten of James Potter’s Media Literacy, he talks about the news and how it is constructed. More importantly, he talks about the effects of fabrication in the news and its harmful effects.

On page 149, Potter states that “sometimes journalists are tempted to tell a good story and ignore facts that get in the way of telling that story.” But what about journalists that fabricate a good story, but still use accurate facts? What if a journalist fabricates a story that uses facts that are common sense?

In the story Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys produced by The Onion News, they have done just that. Despite being an entirely fictional story for entertainment purposes only, the facts that they give are in fact accurate, although common sense. They give facts such as multiple stabbings affected the monkey’s health despite what instrument was used to stab; or the stabbings themselves were none the less damaging based on what the species of monkey or whether the monkey was young, old, or pregnant.

Many would laugh at this analysis saying that these are common sense facts that everyone knows and that it is because of these “no duh” facts, this story would not be newsworthy. But think about it, how many times has a so-called credible news group regurgitated facts that would be considered common knowledge? The difference would be that the onion is blatantly fictional and does not try to spin what they are broadcasting as anything else. The credible news sources on the other hand do present even common sense material in a way that makes them appear to have some sort of newsworthy claim. It reminds me of the last quote on page 138 in the introduction of the chapter regarding fabricated news, “Yes they do. But I can always tell when they are making something up. With the so-called real news shows, I am never sure what they are making up.”