COMM 317: Before we let the balloon story drop ... a Hemingway quote, values and a segue to public relations

The novelist Ernest Hemingway famously said the one thing a good writer needs a "built-in, shock-proof, crap detector," and media critic Neil Postman of New York University elaborated on it in a 1969 speech titled "Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" to the National Council of Teachers of English.

We'll come back to Postman in a minute. He had something to say I think is important.

But first, this. At least one journalist had her crap-detector turned on with batteries fully charged when the balloon went up. Reported Brain Stelter and Dan Frosch in The New York Times:

Before the fame-seeking backyard scientist Richard Heene phoned the police to report that his 6-year-old son, Falcon, had floated away on a homemade flying saucer Thursday morning, he called a local TV station and asked them to send a news helicopter.

Taken aback by the request, the news director at the station, KUSA-TV, Patti Dennis, said she called back and told Mr. Heene flatly, “I don’t believe you.” Still skeptical when Mr. Heene put a police officer on the phone to verify the story, Ms. Dennis added, “I told the deputy that I didn’t believe he was real, either.”

But her moment of clarity didn't last very long, and the helicopter was dispatched.

Don't blame news director Dennis for what happened next, though. The national cable networks didn't even have that momentary flicker of clarity. The Times' account continues:

Eventually satisfied by the local police’s report of a missing child, she dispatched the helicopter to the skies over Fort Collins, Colo., where the helium-filled balloon had taken flight, jump-starting an extraordinary afternoon of television coverage. Cable news anchors suspended skepticism in favor of spectacular images of the balloon as it glided across northern Colorado and landed in a dusty field about 60 miles away, and the ratings for CNN and the Fox News Channel doubled for the duration of the spectacle.

But even before Falcon was found hours later hiding inside a box in the Heene family home, incredulous observers were asking: Is it all a hoax?

Some lingering questions: How can a professional media guy's individual values function as a crap detector? Should they? How can handed-down-through-the-ages ethical principles like Aristotle's, Kant's or John Stuart Mills' function as crap detectors? Should they? What sort of reading do you get on your own individual built-in, shock-proof crap detector when you hear the cable networks' rating went up along with the Heene family's balloon?

When Postman spoke to the English teachers, he talked about this slippery issue of individual values:

Each person's crap-detector is embedded in their value system; if you want to teach the art of crap-detecting, you must help students become aware of their values. ...

Now, I realize that what I just said sounds fairly pompous in itself, if not arrogant, but there is no escaping from saying what attitudes you value if you want to talk about crap-detecting.

In other words, bullshit is what you call language that treats people in ways you do not approve of.

So any teacher who is interested in crap-detecting must acknowledge that one man's bullshit is another man's catechism. Students should be taught to learn how to recognize bullshit, including their own.

So what values are Postman expressing here? One sounds a lot like the golden rule. Kant? And then there's this: One person's bullshit is another person's catechism. Hey, I like that. How could that attitude help news writers keep their crap detectors turned on?

More questions: On Monday, when we take this up in class, we'll be starting the chapter in Patterson and Wilkins, "Media Ethics" on public relations. How could Postman's attitude help public relations professionals keep their crap detectors fully charged? News people and flacks have an adversarial relationship. How does that help them keep each other's crap detectors operational?