Media Critique 1

Over the weekend there was an odd and intriguing headline on Fox New’s home webpage. The article was titled “Florida boy, 7, finds ancient canoe while scuba diving”. The article was about a boy who was scuba diving with his grandfather and together, over the course of several days,  were able to uncover this canoe and bring it to the surface. Many scientific officials and archaeologists went to see the canoe at Owen Lake. They determined that the canoe dated back to prehistoric times and Julia Byrd, one of the senior archaeologists, noted that these types of discoveries are the kinds they can really learn from.

Though one can appreciate the interesting historical aspect of this article, it seems to break one of the Seven Basic Yardsticks of Journalism: Actually being newsworthy. This story is considered a peripheral or a human interest topic, so why would it be on the homepage of an international news corporation? With all the things going on in the world, why was this particular story chosen over say, the molasses spill in Hawaii. The spill in Hawaii is going to affect the environment and people there, in possibly major ways, over a long period of time. Meanwhile, the story about this prehistoric canoe may only affect a few scientists. Now there could be some ground breaking information that they could take away from analyzing this canoe, but what are really the chances of that? This story will not have a stretched out and direct effect over the course of the next six months, the canoe itself may be sitting in a museum warehouse, as you read this, just gathering dust. The actual impact is very little, and one could go as far as saying it has no impact at all. It appears that Fox News was the only national/international news corporation that reported on this event. There are a few local news companies in Florida that had information on it, but even then, they were not on the homepage.

It is obvious to see that this story is like many, where it is only for fluff and filler. I understand that any and every news company is going to have some fluff, but does it really have to be on the front page?