I want to follow up on the previous post about the “Balloon Boy” because this story has lasted another news cycle giving us more material to comment on. Over the past few days we have witnessed a number of commentators filled with cynicism and holding the power of a camera and microphone destroy a family. This is what the media does, it comes in and takes over the lives and stories of the people caught up in the nation’s attention. Cable news panels of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, attorneys and laymen sit in studios watching snippets of video and reporting on the scene. They then take the little bit of information they glean from what they see and make definitive statements about a person and family in this case. Even if the charges against the father and his family are correct they pale in comparison to how the media and experts are raising these types of stories and the people involved in them to this kind of level.

I wrote about this dynamic before, in particular the role of mental health professionals and laypersons/”journalists” commenting on these types of events through the guise of the media. I want to provide another couple of examples from this incident to illustrate the dangerous and harmful territory we are in when it comes to how people without direct access to a case and the people involved compromise the integrity of such fields as journalism, mental health and the law.

Here is a great example of how the media interpreted and sensationalized this story from the start in a video where Arianna Huffington argues against the “voyeuristic” aspects of covering it beyond the boy being found safe with Ed Shultz:

Next is another example of a mental health professional, in this case Forensic Psychiatrist Keith Ablow on the O’Reilly Factor, diagnosing the father and family from the confines of a studio and at a distance from the facts determining that they are suffering from what he calls “media addiction:”

I wonder if we all aren’t suffering from this “media addiction,” particular those in the media who perpetuate these stories and draw people like Richard Heene and his family in. The need also to set people up for ridicule, which is the basis of reality television, is the point of these types of stories. We can sit around and laugh at them, point our fingers at how they are behaving and then ignore our own obsessions and faults, forgetting that many of us wouldn’t turn a camera down if it was pointed at us. In fact, it seems we crave the camera and would go to great lengths to look ridiculous ourselves, cooking up fantastic plots to get attention. The media is always ready and wanting us to do so for their own gain. This is after all the cheapest form of television.

Then we have Anderson Cooper and his panel of Erica Hill and Lisa Bloom amplifying the story of this family, their “irresponsibility” as parents, and again the probability that this incident is a hoax:

And in the end here is a video of neighbors of the Heene’s defending them as a family and members of their community:

Again, this story reveals where we are and how far we have gotten from maintaining and defending high journalistic and mental heath standards and analysis. The amount of social media traffic on this story and others like it, especially through platforms like Twitter, feed off of the media frenzy. The new technologies of social media create instantaneous cultural tribunals projecting shame and rage on those who find themselves thrust into the spotlight. What is on display when commenting on others we don’t know and without the amount of facts that are necessary to form the most accurate opinion is arrogance. What makes an investigative, analytical, or diagnostic approach work is a large measure of humility and enough time to discover what is in reality going on outside of the spotlight and camera’s range. In the era of speed, where depth is lacking, we miss so much of the story and in doing so create so much real and lasting harm. If Richard Heene and his family do turn out to be hoaxsters, or if he is ever formally diagnosed as a “Sociopath” or “Narcissist” as I noted Dr. Nancy Snyderman suggested in the previous post then we at some point must recognize we helped to create him and them.

(Matthew Yglesias has an excellent post at ThinkProgress titled “The Cable Effect” that demonstrates how the influence of daytime cable news works. Also read the post “Balloon Boy – Quickest Meme Ever?” at urlesque.com.)