Imagine finding out that a family member has died only to find out a couple minutes later that they are actually alive. Think about the roller coaster of emotions you would go through. This scenario is exactly what happened on the tragic day of Kobe Bryant’s death. Kobe was killed in a helicopter crash that claimed the lives of 9 people. TMZ was the first to report that Kobe was killed in a crash but didn’t name anyone else. Soon after, numerous news channels started reporting that former NBA player Rick Fox was also on the helicopter. Many people, including his family and close friends believed it although several minutes later they found out he was alive. But the damage had already been done. His family had to go through the emotions of losing a loved one before finding out the truth.
In Harry Frankfurt’s On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit, he talks about the differences between lies and bullshit. According to Frankfurt, a liar tries to mislead us into believing that the facts are other than they actually are. A bullshitter on the other hand, does not care about what the truth is as long as what he says benefits him. It could be true or false but to him it doesn’t matter.
The news outlets who reported that Rick Fox was involved in the helicopter crash were simply looking to increase their ratings and make money. The question is ultimately, did they know he wasn’t on the helicopter or did they just print his name because he was famous? According to the way Frankfurt defines lies and bullshit, knowing that he was not on the helicopter but reporting that he was is lying because they were trying to mislead the public into believing something that was not true. Simply using his name without having any information is bullshitting because the news channels did not care about what the truth was as long as they could get people to tune into their channel.
I believe that these news channels were bullshitting because when a major event occurs, everyone wants to be the first to report something. That’s why I think they used Rick Fox’s name as a way to increase ratings. It didn’t matter to them if he was actually involved as long as people tuned into their channel.
Hey Jay,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this post, it has quite an interesting topic and it raises a lot of questions. It is true that numerous news stations made false reports on who was involved with that helicopter crash, but can we really consider that fake news? There is a difference between false reporting and fake news. False reports are generally accidental while fake news is deliberate. I suppose it is possible that various news stations do deliberately report things that are hoaxes; however, there is no data to back that up for this story in particular. I enjoyed reading this post because it left me thinking about how we can differentiate between false reporting and fake news.
I do have a few things to suggest that could help strengthen your post. The first thing would be to add in more citations. You made a lot of claims in this post, but you didn't cite any articles or pages to back up your claims. You also only made one brief connection to the Frankfurt class reading; I would suggest that you make multiple connections to this reading as well as bringing it up earlier in your article. I also suggest making a little descriptor for who Harry Frankfurt is; outside readers may not be familiar with the readings, so it's important clear up any ambiguity. Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable read, just a few things to keep in mind for your next post!
Hi Jay,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you gave a backstory to the Kobe helicopter death and gave it as an example because it is so recent, however I see that in the first paragraph you have the TMZ headline as an example but you never talk about it again.
I see that you are trying to say that "other news outlets wanted to get more clicks than TMZ, so they included Rick's name" but you never state it. I believe this is an important distinction between the examples and should talk about this explicitly and relate it more to the reading other than just stating the definition and saying what you think it is according to the definition. You should also think about breaking up the paragraphs to make it easier to read.