Sunday, August 29, 2010

No News Is Star News

As a welcome break from all the homegrown terrorism news (who wants to read that all the time?), the Toronto Star's newsprint version today features a hard-hitting piece about what you might call a social experiment. It seems the paper "lent" 5 credit cards to 5 pandhandlers to see what would happen. One of them, a stapping young lad with a fluffy yellow mohawk whose partially hidden face graces the front page, "brought it back with thanks and an $8 charge for a burger."

Proving what--that panhandlers are honest? That if we find ourselves short of change we should hand over our credit cards, knowing we'll likely be charged for, say, a hot dog and a Slurpee and not, say, an iPad and an Audi?

In a way, the Star's problems are crystalized in this piece. The paper is more interesting in scoring points for the leftist agenda--in this case by fabricating its own news--than it is in reporting the actual, factual news.

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