It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
by Drew Curtis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Drew CurtisEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-31
ISBN: 1592402917
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Gotham
Book Reviews of It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
Book Review: Fark Dis
Summary: 3 Stars
The Fark.com website is a hilarious indictment of the ridiculousness and uselessness of Mass Media, and this here book is meant mostly for laughs. (Solid in-depth critiques of stupid news, usually with a focus on corporate/advertiser pressure, are easily found elsewhere.) On the good side, Drew Curtis has some pretty good insights on why news is so dumb these days, from the perspective of the informed outside observer. Good examples are his solid hatchet jobs on news coverage of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction or Dick Cheney's face shooting incident. Curtis also has a pretty well-considered closing chapter on how Mass Media is failing in light of the Internet, shooting down the old boys who continue to live with their heads in the sand.
But Curtis keeps falling back into thin examples of ridiculous stories that amount to little more than a boring list. There is also a lot of unintentional irony here, as Curtis is guilty of many of weaknesses that he sarcastically condemns from Mass Media. For example, he blasts mainstream journalists for a lack of fact-checking. But here he states that Alexander Hamilton is on the $20 bill; and says he was in middle school when Johnny Carson left his show (1992) after earlier saying several times that he was in college in the early 90s. Also, Curtis slams journalists for pasting old material into new stories to take up space. But a large amount of space in this book is pasted submissions from the Fark.com message board. A few of these are surprisingly insightful but most are the cheeky pseudo-commentary that you'd expect.
This book is still good for laughs as you read about instances of stupid journalism from lazy journalists. But it's unclear how serious Curtis is trying to be in terms of analysis and insight on very important media issues. But in the end, this book gives the impression that it doesn't take its subject matter too seriously. Readers with the same mindset will enjoy it - for a while. [~doomsdayer520~]
Summary of It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
From the creator of Fark.com, an expos? on the media gone awry, revealing the hysterical, often outrageous non-news that passes for newsworthy todayHave you ever found yourself noticing certain patterns in the news you see and read each day? Perhaps it's the blatant fear-mongering in the absence of facts on your local 6 o'clock news ("Tsunami could hit the Atlantic any day!" EVERYBODY PANIC), or the seasonal articles that appear year after year like clockwork ("Roads will be crowded this holiday season." Thanks AAA.). IT'S NOT NEWS, IT'S FARK is Drew Curtis' clever examination of the state of the media today and a hilarious look at the go-to stories mass media uses when there's just not enough hard news to fill a newspaper or a news broadcast. Who is to blame for non-news in the media? Is it the media, or the media consumer and their website-clicking habits? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between? IT'S NOT NEWS, IT'S FARK takes a crack at why
Drew exposes eight stranger-than-fiction media patterns that prove just how little reporting is going on in the world of reporters today. Regardless of whether it's a slow news day, mainstream media still has to deliver. IT'S NOT NEWS, IT'S FARK examines all the "news" that was never fit for print in the first place, and promises to have you laughing (with the media, mind you, not at them...) along the way. Let the hilarity ensue.
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