(The following is my newspaper column for our issue of October 2009.)


Every now and then I'll see some "major news story" unfold on national television and watch the public's reaction to said event, and think to myself, "This isn't at all what people think it is." And then later, when it turns out that I was right, I quite often stand there scratching my head and wondering why someone with my high school GPA and admittedly limited mental capacity could figure it out when so many others (presumably far more on the ball than myself) could not.

Case in point: last week's gut-wrenching saga of "Balloon Boy," the 6-year-old Colorado child who was first reported to be soaring over the earth in a homemade helium balloon shaped like a flying saucer who was later found to have been hiding out inside his home the entire time.

Initial reports stated that young Falcon Heene had reportedly climbed into the balloon just before it became untethered and launched some 7,000 feet into the air. When the balloon finally returned to terra firma and Falcon did not emerge saying "the firma the terra, the better," everyone suddenly became afraid that the boy might have fallen out somewhere along the way. (This in spite of the fact that video cameras were trained on the balloon pretty much the entire length of its flight and never once captured an image of a stray 6-year-old falling by the wayside.)

Later, after the nation had breathed its collective sigh of relief, little Falcon tripped up by admitting on national TV that the entire affair had been something his parents had dreamed up for a proposed reality show they hoped to launch.

"We did this for the show," Falcon told Wolf Blitzer - at which point America's collective sigh of relief became a gasp of astonishment and outrage.

Next thing you know, the local sheriff who had earlier said there had been no indication that the whole thing had been a hoax was back on TV, eating his words with all the gusto of a gourmet forced to exist on a diet of cold Spaghettios and warm root beer. And once again I found myself wondering if I had really been the only one not surprised by the revelation.

Even as the balloon was still drifting through the air on live TV and Internet feeds around the globe, I was struck by the craft's size and how poorly constructed it appeared to be. I'm no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I've flown a few kites and a helium balloon or two in my time and I could tell by looking at this thing that it really didn't seem capable of lifting a 6-year-old child seven INCHES into the air, let alone 7,000 feet.

But just try explaining that to a lowest common denominator of viewers whose ability to discern fact from fiction has been severely dulled by the ongoing popularity of so-called "reality TV" - not to mention eight years of the Bush-Cheney Administration.

Come to think of it, try explaining it to those various electronic news outlets for whom it has become far more important to get the story FIRST than to get it RIGHT.

I've been a professional journalist long enough to know that all the research in the world will not prevent the occasional mistake from still creeping into news reports now and then. But it seems to me that there is a light year's worth of difference between making an honest mistake despite your best intentions, and not caring enough to even bother trying. The very thought of sacrificing accuracy for expediency would have my old friend Bob Peterson - the kind of old school, no-nonsense journalist you just don't see much these days outside of really old black and white movies - spinning in his cremation urn.

Seventy-one years ago next week, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater players bamboozled American radio listeners into believing that our planet was being attacked by invaders from Mars. They did this through a radio play that featured fictional "news broadcasts" that were so convincing that listeners - already on edge from years of Great Depression and the threat of war in Europe - accepted fantasy as reality.

In the aftermath of that fabled "panic broadcast," there were many who called for Welles to face some sort of punishment for having masterminded such a hoax. But one New York columnist came to Welles' defense, going so far as to praise the legendary thespian for demonstrating on such a wide scale the power of the broadcast medium and how it could be abused. It was, indeed, a powerful and necessary lesson.

Now here we are, seven decades later, being taught the same lesson all over again - this time not by actors presenting a Halloween entertainment, but by an attention-seeking family of dimbulbs and an electronic news media all too willing to give him his undeserved 15 minutes of fame.

"They put on a very good show for us," Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said after the hoax had been exposed.

Boy, they sure did - and it's nobody's fault but our own.

And somewhere the ghost of Orson Welles is having a good laugh...

(Copyright © 2009, by John A. Small)