Right now, there is an online frenzy about the truth regarding Lil Wayne's health-either he is in a coma or he's "recovering"-the world doesn't know and the media cannot give a definitive answer.
Why?
There is no such thing as informative news anymore, just "newsertainment", a new element of news that tackles the pleasure of entertainment rather than informative thinking.
Right now, Lil Wayne is either OK or not but CNN, the world's trusted news is saying he is fine and FOX News, CNN's greatest rival is saying he isn't.
The fact that both of these stations are reporting two totally conflicting stories shows that neither one has double fact checked none of the sourced information.
As I was writing this story, FOX News completely retracted the report that Lil Wayne is in an induced coma.
In the past recent years, the media has focused more on rating driven stories and the public has picked up on the agenda. Depending on what businesses advertise on the station will move the tone of the article in a certain direction. The ideals can be independent, conservative, and liberal along with other idioms like "right wing" and "left wing".
The news stations have lost their perspective on what their job was intended to do. Our media was to inform of the truth and to keep the public aware of events that held importance over the lives of the American people. However, the media miles about the debts of the people’s lives and tattle the scandal and entice those lured to “like” so the traffic can be tallied and boasted. Key words are becoming a cliche for headlines and bloggers are being considered journalist. CNN has iReport, where views and thoughts of random CNN subscribers are uploaded to the website. The effect of calling it “iReport” contends that anyone who uploads an interesting story is a reporter. This wording implies credibility and credibility shouldn't be that easy to obtain. Journalistic credibility is one of a reporter’s hardest things to accomplish during a career and for our media (or rather the owners) to make it rather easy to grasp is insulting.
FOX News is now reporting the same story as CNN; that Lil Wayne is “recovering”.
This misdirection of our important information is partly the cause of the hatred and selfish rhetoric that is emerging in our society. People can go to whatever station that is conforming to their specific mind set and engorge on whatever ignorance that is needed for the fix.
Americans are confused as to what true good news is. They don’t know if the story is true by reliable sources but by the amount of Facebook “likes” or “shares” the article has. People are starting to see how many of their Twitter followers are talking about an issue and if someone famous speaks on it then the validity is there.
Tonight’s Lil Wayne internet fiasco is a perfect example of how the news media feeds off the energy of numbers, not passion for the story. The fact that another young, incredibly talented artist and savvy businessman have had a possible reaction to his increasingly popular and candid drug habit is not the focus but the right headline has to bring in the right numbers. No one wants to hear that the young man is in need of some serious help or he will inevitably kill himself. And that some children consider him "heroic".
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