6-Year-old "Balloon Boy" Story: Media Hits a New Low

I've never seen a more trivial story become a major news event. The Press/media has hit a new low. It including the interruption of regular scheduled programming in NYC about an event that occurred in Colorado. The early reports were about a runaway balloon that might've involved a 6-year-old. It turns out there was no boy in a balloon. Therefore, the press, including the NY Times spent a major amount of time covering a story about an empty balloon. So it might make ironic sense that the family involved in this possible hoax, are kooks.

"When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm. In this ultimate swap, the Heenes swap lives with a psychic mom who speaks to the dead and can control the weather, her husband and her children -- who believe they are destined to be star," the promotional copy read.

Father Richard Heene is an amateur scientist and storm chaser, according to a 2007 Denver Post profile. He is a co-author of the Web site The Science Detective.

Here's a video CBS news. Katie Couric called the event "incredible." I call it pure sensationalism.

Watch CBS News Videos Online
The NY Times has this "story" featured prominently on its homepage.

For hours on Thursday, people around the country were gripped by television images of a homemade, silver balloon careening through the skies near here, whooshing over fields and trees and yards with a 6-year-old boy believed inside.

[...]Sheriff Alderden flashed two thumbs up and said simply: “He’s alive. He’s in the house.”

Asked about the possibility that the event was a hoax, he said: “From our investigators on the scene, by all accounts, the angst and anguish this family was experiencing was genuine and the relief they experienced when he reappeared was genuine. I can’t imagine he would have been instructed to hide by his parents.”

There was nothing on the front page on the what should have been the top story: a justice of the peace refusing to marry an interracial couple.