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Hot Off the Press

Since many Youthink readers have at some point been victim to the gnarly, invincible monster that is high-school gossip, I think it’s safe to say that the advice “Don’t believe everything you hear” is pretty common knowledge. While this obviously goes for notes and text messages, I forgot that it also goes for something just as pervasive: news media.

By that I don’t mean that media ever downright lies to its audience. By nature it has a tendency of giving all the limelight to only the most radical opinions; the oddballs and the wackos.

Earlier today I finished a hilarious book – foreign correspondent Andrew Mueller’s I Wouldn’t Start from Here – that made me really think about this. For example, Mueller (a UK resident) points out that “No news bulletin ever led with ‘Across Britain today, 99 per cent of the 1.6 million or so Muslims who live here got up, put in a day’s work, spent time with friends and family, and meant no harm to anybody.' But one dunce dressed up as a suicide bomber could become, if mercifully fleetingly, the most famous Muslim in the country.”

This got me thinking about the other news headlines, which never get their time in the sun. Imagine waking up tomorrow morning and seeing any of these on the front page:

Thousands of New Yorkers indifferent to Mega-Mosque so long as it doesn’t change bus routes

Priest threatening to burn Koran has only eight followers

Evidence found suggests some Canadian teens woke up, went whole day without smuggling gin into class, chain smoking, or tattooing image of Billy Joe Armstrong on their skulls

Average Canadian didn’t check Facebook every ten seconds, actually

Some Palestinians seen showing no signs of aggression, violence towards Jewish counterparts and vice versa

Small children spotted running outside, not playing video games. Reasons still known

Thousands of well-adjusted Torontonians choose not to make twits of themselves by looting downtown Starbucks during G8 Summit

Sometimes I find it hard to remember that half the story is in what the media chooses not to report. What would you like to see in your newspaper?