|
As I listened to news radio I heard them say that a groundbreaking, multi-year study on the lives of teenage girls had just been conducted. Two of the discoveries made by this exhaustive, "groundbreaking" study were that…
1.) Teenage girls who wear sexy clothes are more popular with boys than those who don't.
2.) Teenage girls who closely follow the lives of celebrities are more popular with girls than those who don’t.
Yeah, no shit Sherlock. If this study discovered that teenage girls become your willing slaves when you play a certain melody on the panflute, maybe then it would be groundbreaking. Instead, they spent years, YEARS, doing research just to discover things that everybody already knows. This isn’t an isolated incident either. The news always finds time to report on the most obvious and unnecessary studies as long as they're about exploitable subject matter: "Shocking development. A study from Northwestern University has concluded that racism exists on the internet!"
Study finds that swallowing magnets is dangerous. Study discovers that taking too many business meetings makes employees grumpy. Study discovers that kids who don't have medical insurance go to the hospital less often than kids who do have medical insurance. Study discovers that drivers who carry guns around are more prone to road rage than drivers who don't carry guns. Study find that mixing drugs with alcohol can have negative effects on your brain. I didn't make this up, these are real studies!!!!! It's all just common sense, you don't need to prove this stuff.
It's dumb enough when the news stops the presses to report on a really obvious study, but that's nothing compared to the obvious responses the news gets whenever they do those man-on-the-street interviews.
Everytime a hurricane slams into Florida and destroys hundreds of buildings (considering the amount of press coverage this receives I'd say that Florida gets hit by at least twenty major hurricanes per year), a news crew travels down there and interviews some elderly couple who just had their home of forty years torn apart. What for? Does anybody not know what these people are going to say?
Whenever the gas prices spike, it's not enough for the news to just report on that. No, they'll waste air time by sending out a news crew to a gas station in order to interview you, JOE PUBLIC, to get your thoughts on this grave matter. At the gas station, the reporter always walks up to a guy who's sitting in the biggest, most gas-guzzling SUV that's available in the marketplace and asks "So, how do you feel about the increase in gas prices?"
Well, gee, I don't know… isn't it pretty obvious how he'll feel? Your age, religion and political beliefs don't matter at all here, literally every single person on the planet would react in the same way: "Pay more for gas? I'm not a fan of the concept." There's no reason to interview people on the street when we all know what they're going to say.
Some steroid popping dude who lost his job flips out and kills his wife and kids by suplexing them into the fireplace. A news crew is immediately dispatched to go to the area and interview his neighbors. What do you think his neighbors will say? "I'm not surprised. This was totally expected. They were a family of latinos after all, and we all know that latinos have fiery tempers. Oh uh... even though they died in a fire there's no pun intended there by the way... well maybe a little bit..."
NO! Why interview them? In any home murder story, the neighbors ALWAYS have the same reaction every single time. Their reaction is the same one that you, me or anybody else would have: shock and disbelief. "I can't believe it could happen here. It's unbelievable."
The news knows perfectly well what the neighbors will answer even before they ask any questions. So do the viewers. It's just a big waste of time. So thanks news. Thanks for your hard hitting, investigative reporting. Thank you for proving the obvious one million times over, you hacks.
|
