Eddie Clontz died in 2004. But his legacy lives on through the Weekly World News. Clontz was a firm believer that "truth should never interfere with a good story". So his newspaper made an art of false news on UFOs, aliens, hoax scientific inventions supported by quotes from imaginary persons and facts. The magazine reached its peak through articles like "Bat-Boy" and "Elvis is alive".
Some of us may quickly come to dismiss his style since we regard our conventional news with such high esteem. But what is news after all? Isn't it just a recollection of events as told by a novice reporter? And arent these reported events colored by the enormous range of motivations constantly at work? News is created mostly when men do something. And what men do is not always genuine. Good examples of this are the news about the Piltdown Man, the Iraqi WMD threat, the Indian prodigy getting the NASA award and countless others. And with sting operations catching fancy with news providers, the line between fiction and facts are getting dimmer. What "Weekly World News" does is that it brings the hoax one level donwstream. It will be interesting to see how this concept catches on in places like India.
1 comment:
good one
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