Wednesday 28 August 2013

Miley and modern journalism

So why was Miley Cyrus all over the world news yesterday for a dance at an awards show?

The Onion asked the Managing Editor Of CNN.Com to explain.

It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.
    There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ’s sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline “Miley’s Shocking Moves.” In fact, putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public. And come to think of it, probably a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Syria, those suffering from the current unrest in Egypt, or, hell, even people who just wanted to read about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
But boy oh boy did it get us some web traffic. Which is why I, Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN.com, put the story in our top spot.   

Satire. It’s the tribute humour plays to truth.

Or asMatt Nippert said, “The best critique of online journalism ever - and it's a spoof.”

4 comments:

Mr Lineberry said...

I had never heard of this female until yesterday (had to look her up on Wikipedia.org); seems she is a contemporary entertainer.

I wonder how many Libz press releases could have been used to fill the space this silly girl took up in the media?

Anonymous said...

Funnier still, The Independent fell for it:

http://order-order.com/2013/08/27/indy-falls-for-onion-spoof/

Ruth said...

While silly old Joan Rivers was hand-wringing and saying "She could have been a role model", father Billy Ray said he was posting about Syria.

Why the young woman should be a "role model" is beyond me.

Anonymous said...

Joan Rivers, so ugly even the botox died when they tried to put it in her face, has no business discussing "role models". After all, take a good long look at her behaviour over the years.

Amit