6-year-old boy is floating away

The fine people at http://www.whereisballoonboy.com/ have weighed in.

 

For some reason that made me laugh my ass off.

 

"I heard from a kid who saw another kid who talked to a kid at a gas station who works with the older brother of the kid who lives next door to the kid who said his little brother got in the balloon."

A big whew that the kid is safe... but another little black eye for responsible journalism. What happened to being right instead of being first?

 

I wonder if Balloon Boy is related to Bandwagon Boy.

 

Yeah... me too.

 

"This just in: The Balloon Boy has been found safe.

We now return to ongoing coverage of John and Kate."

 

Can The Daily Show turn this around in time?

Set your Tivos, people.

 

That kid should be grounded!

 

Oh, spare me all the whining about the coverage.

Police say a kid is missing, and his siblings say he climbed into an experimental balloon. That experimental balloon is flying over the state of Colorado, while the authorities scramble to find it and track it. Helicopters have live video as the balloon starts to deflate 7,000 feet in the air and slowly fall to earth.

Now a bunch of you are saying "stupid reporters got suckered. Should have covered more important stuff."

Are you people fucking high? IT WAS A BALLOON THAT WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE A 6 YEAR OLD IN IT FLOATING OVER COLORADO. Any news channel that covers one single other story while they have a shot of that balloon should shut down. There is not one thing on earth that anyone watching CNN wanted to see other than that balloon.

Quick anecdote: I was once in the booth producing coverage of a young autistic boy who climbed to the top of a massive high-tension electrical pole. His teenage brother climbed up to protect him, despite being terrified of heights. Firefighters had to climb up because their highest ladders went about 1/5 of the way up the tower. At one point our helicopter panned off the boys to show the crowd below. My news director came into the control room and said to me "Do me a favor. Let the chopper crew know that if they show me anything other than those two kids up on that pole, they are FUCKING FIRED!!"

Seriously, the coverage of this that I saw was fine. It's not a newspaper - you can't wait until it's over and run 12 inches and a photo of the balloon. You show the balloon, never cut away from the balloon, and hope you don't sound too stupid when you say "That's a balloon over Colorado that police think has a kid in it" over and over and over until it lands. No one is turning away... unless you cut to something else, at which point they will frantically search for another channel that is still on it.

 

Hey yo Balloon Boy, I'm really happy for you and Ima let you finish but JonBenet Ramsey was the most terrifying missing child case of all time.

 

Or Bubble Boy.

 

Ha!