It's Not News, It's Fark : How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News

by Curtis, Drew

• ISBN13: 9781592403660
• ISBN10: 1592403662
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-29
• Publisher: Gotham

Summary

Now in paperback, the hilarious exposé on the media gone awry, from the creator of the wildly popular Fark.com Have you ever noticed 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 six o’clock news (Tsunami could hit the Atlantic any day!” Everybody panic!), or the seasonal articles that appear year after year (Roads will be crowded this holiday season.” Thanks, AAA.) It’s Not News, It’s Farkis Drew Curtis’s 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. Drew exposes eight stranger-than-fiction media patterns that prove just how little reporting is going on in the world of reporters today. It’s Not News, It’s Farkexamines all the news” that was never fit for print in the first place, and promises to have you laughing along the way.

Author Biography

Drew Curtis founded Fark.com after several beers one night in 1999. Today it averages 3.5 to 5 million visitors per month. Media corporations worldwide continue to use Fark as a resource to judge which stories are newsworthy. He has been featured in Time, The Washington Post, PC Magazine, Maxim, PHM, and Playboy; on hundreds of radio stations around the country; and was recently on the cover of Business 2.0 and named one of the -ô50 Most Important People on the Web-ö by PC World.

Table of Contents

What Is Fark?	p. 1
Media Fearmongering	p. 19
Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article	p. 59
Headline Contradicted by Actual Article	p. 97
Equal Time for Nutjobs	p. 111
The Out-of-Context Celebrity Comment	p. 135
Seasonal Articles	p. 157
Media Fatigue	p. 195
Lesser Media Space Fillers	p. 223
Epilogue: What Should Mass Media Be Doing Instead?	p. 251
Acknowledgments	p. 267
Index	p. 269
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