It's Not News, It's Fark

"In It's Not News, It's Fark, Drew Curtis takes a critical look at the mass media. He promises to examine why the news is often not news at all, to look at the fear mongering, the cyclical nature of the news and the fluff that is passed off as important. Drew breaks down these not-news stories into 8 separate categories and gives examples, along with user comments from Fark. Unfortunately, 230 of the books 278 pages (including the index) are used for these examples. What time is spent talking about the media and the advertisement model it is built on, is insightful a bit cynical and very brief." Read below for the rest of the review.

It's Not News, It's Fark How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News
author	Drew Curtis
pages	278
publisher	Gotham Books
rating	6
reviewer	Robert Rozeboom
ISBN	978-1-592-40291-5
summary	A look at why the mass media puts out so many stories that aren't really news.

The book starts off with a brief Fark history lesson. What Drew did before Fark. Its first incarnation and how it got to be what it is today. The author then gives us an outline of the different types of news stories that he considers not newsworthy. Drew points out that since most news is brought to you by an entity that makes its money selling ads, the more eyes watching those ads the better. History has shown that nothing attracts eyes like fluff, fear and stretching the truth. There is a reason why there are so many tabloids in the checkout lane.

The first type of news story Drew covers is what he calls, 'Media Fearmongering'. Everything from finding bacteria on your keyboard, terrorists in your home town to animal attacks. This is the most easily recognized type of non-story.

We then move on to, 'Unpaid Placement Masquerading as Actual Article'. This includes most surveys, new words in the dictionary and all things publicity stunt related. Everything you'd read in the 'Lifestyles' section of the newspaper.

Next is, 'Headline Contradicted by Actual Article'. Misleading headlines to outright lies are addressed. Drew makes the point here that the people who run these stories often realize that they are misleading at best but know that they will generate traffic.

'Equal Time for Nutjobs' covers Noah's ark being discovered, conspiracy theories and a guy who thinks the garden of Eden and Atlantis are in Florida. The crazier the claim the better.

Then we have 'The Out-of-context Celebrity Comment'. Why do we care what someone who pretends to be someone else for a living, has to say about Nuclear proliferation? Who knows but we sure do.

Drew next looks at 'Seasonal Articles' . The amount of money lost due to a fall in productivity because of the Super Bowl, inspecting your Halloween candy, and traffic spikes during holiday weekends. All of these stories should look familiar.

The next chapter is, 'Media Fatigue'. How do you know when a big story has just about run its course? Wait for the stories about whether or not the media has given it enough attention or if they've gone too far.

'Lesser Media Space Fillers' covers everything that couldn't fit into one of the other categories as well as some of Drew's personal observations of what type of stories tend to get the most coverage.

Each one of the chapters has a collection of Fark comments after every example story. The comments seem to be chosen at random and are frankly extraneous. The only reason I can think of to include them is that someone in marketing wanted to tie the book more closely to Fark.

The final chapter of the book is by far the most interesting to read and only 14 pages long. This is the wrap up of the problem as Drew sees it and what he thinks the mass media should be doing instead. His ideas are well reasoned and in my opinion spot on. As long as the media is driven by advertising they will walk the line of responsible, informative journalism and outrageousness as close to outrageousness as they can and still be taken seriously by a majority of consumers.

My criticism of this book is that almost the whole thing is just a list of Fark stories. If you've read Fark you've read 90% of this book. It would have been more interesting if the book was an actual discussion of the shortcomings of the mass media, why it is in the place it's in and what could be done to change it. Those topics are covered but in such a brief way that they almost seem like an afterthought.

If you like reading Fark and for some reason you want to read a collection of Fark stories and a few comments in a non-computer screen format you will love this book. If you want to read about how the mass media works and some thoughts on how it could be better you'll love 50 pages of this book.

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You can purchase It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Don't buy it

It's a trap!

Re:Modded by someone who doesn't know Fark

Thank you, Ric Romero.

Re:Modded by someone who doesn't know Fark

Although it's rare for a first post to be on topic, this one is. "It's a trap!" refers to the statement made by Admiral Akbar in Star Wars and is a catchphrase often employed on Fark.

I see your "Get moderators attention to fix egregious moderation" and raise you one pedantry: they call it a cliche on Fark

Brittany's Hair and Other Fluff

In an age where Brittany Spear's hair (regardless of which end of her it is or isn't on) is considered to be "newsworthy", we are all dooomed!

2 cents

QueenB.

It's not news...

...it's a revenue stream.

I like Fark and all, but it's getting a little ridiculous lately, especially with the changing away from the old days of naughtiness that alas, are gone...

Re:It's not news...

On Soviet Slashdot, cliched in-jokes post and re-post YOU.

Re:It's not news...

I couldn't guess why you say it's any less (or more) naughty than it ever was.

Seen a Boobies link lately? Not on the main page you haven't.

Re:It's not news...

You'll get over it.

[insert a cleverly-captioned cat picture here]

Re:It's not news...

Yes, it is pretty insulting. Fark's owner publishes a book that essentially criticizes the mass media for watering down their content in order to make the most money, then almost immediately afterwards changes the rules of his site to get rid of user-posted content that isn't advertiser-friendly.

Re:It's not news...

I like Fark and all, but it's getting a little ridiculous lately

That's OK, people are allowed to grow and change.

And from what I can tell, it's a dead-on take on the mass media.

If we can finally break some of the spell that the media has on nearly everyone in this country, we might be able to actually make some changes and avoid the disaster that's surely ahead for us the way we're going. We might even be able to demonstrate why the whole "Liberal Media" meme is pure bullshit.

If you look at the last 5 years, and investigate the way this fucked-up administration has used the media to advance the worst possible agenda for this country, it makes your hair stand on end. All the times, for example, that the administration would leak a bogus story, which the media would run, then Dick Cheney would go on TV and say "see, the media agrees with us" because they ran the bogus story that Cheney himself leaked in the first place, and the way they've "played the refs" by convincing everyone that the entire media is part of a vast liberal conspiracy in order to get people to stop believing in facts.

"A War on Truth" is the best way I've seen it put.

The people behind Fark are more insightful than most, so they stand a good chance of being part of the solution by exposing what's going on. So the jokes aren't quite as dirty any more... Oh well.

Re:It's not news...

>The people behind Fark are more insightful than most

Obviously, you've never read the fark forums.

I dont see how fark suddenly has this reputation for being media savvy. They were the biggest supporters of the Iraq war, linking to all these right wing op-ed pieces supporting and casting a blind eye to any naysayers (if not outright calling them cowards). While the rest of us were hearing the dissent and how painfully obvious there werent going to be any WMs foundD in Iraq from NPR, the farkers were going crazy over MSNBC and Foxnews and LGF and Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, when i think of media-savvy, I dont think fark.

Re:It's not news...

I dont see how fark suddenly has this reputation for being media savvy. They were the biggest supporters of the Iraq war, linking to all these right wing op-ed pieces supporting and casting a blind eye to any naysayers (if not outright calling them cowards).

Damn, where are my mod points?

The endless pro-war crap was sickening. Then there was a thread of jokes about killing Iraqis. I posted a photo that had been on the front page of the newspapers (even in the US), showing an injured Iraqi child, to try and point out the reality they were joking about. Result: I got banned.

Fark is not insightful. Fark is not a free speech zone; it's heavily censored by anonymous moderators with no accountability, which is always a recipe for abuse. No, Fark is simply a way for Drew to make money out of content supplied by other people, and it sounds as though this book is exactly the same.

(I still read it for the links, but via a scraper which turns it into headline plus link to story, bypassing the discussion threads and the rest of the site entirely.)

A few of us have upped and left

We formed bannination.com where we can have lots of naughtiness and moderate ourselves instead of having someone making all the calls.

Didn't you get what you paid for?

>"it would have been more interesting if the book was an actual discussion of the shortcomings of the mass media, why it is in the place it's in and what could be done to change it. Those topics are covered but in such a brief way that they almost seem like an afterthought."

Then again, if you were really looking for an insightful analysis of centralized media, maybe your time would have been better spent reading Marshall McLuhan [barnesandnoble.com] or Noam Chomsky [barnesandnoble.com] than Drew Curtis.

Just a passing thought...

"My criticism of this book ...

is that almost the whole thing is just a list of Fark stories. "

You'll get over it.

It's not news...

It's Slashdot.

It's not a book review, it's Slashdot.

Does anybody actually edit or proof these book "reviews", or do the "editors" just copy and paste it from their inbox? Seriously, the opening three lines are so stilted and crap that no proper editor would accept this review. Couple that with the traditional "it's" screwup and I didn't want to read any further.

But I did. And lo and behold it's a typical Slashdot "review", consisting of ten paragraphs summarizing each chapter individually followed with "I thought this book sucked/ruled because...". My criticism of this "review" is that almost the whole thing is just a list of the chapters.

If this was a book review for an elementary class you might slide by with a B, but otherwise you get a D.

Ugh, Slashdot book review comments

Does anyone ever actually read these "book review" "comments", or just copy and paste it from the last book review article? Seriously, the whole comment is so unoriginal that no proper moderator would give it +1 insightful. Couple that with the traditional sarcasm and I didn't want to read any further.

But I did. And lo and behold it's a typical "Slashdot 'review'" "comment", consisting of three paragraphs (if you can call them that!) criticizing the article generally, then specifically criticizing it, then summarizing with a snarky grade-school analogy.

If this was a comment on Fark, you might slide by with a "You suck," but otherwise you get a "goatse.cx link".

Complete the cycle!!!

Quick! We must continue the cycle. Someone Digg this article, then get that as a link on the main page of Fark. Or add reddit into the mix as well.

Necessary Illusions

Noam Chomsky's "Necessary Illusions" has a very good look at why US news media is practically useless.

Short version: the media companies have trained themselves to avoid conflict with the powers that be. The powers that be hardly need to come down on media anymore. These days if you see a news story regarding the powers that be coming down on the media - it's fluff.

Long version: it's Chomsky - you'll have to read it for yourself. Unless anyone else wants to elaborate...

Re:Necessary Illusions

Chomsky describes himself as a "a libertarian socialist", whatever that means.

He's one of those guys that heavily criticizes the USA, but still seems to admire it. Constructive criticism as opposed to the destructive type we usually get in the media.

As for free speech, he refuses to even take legal action when someone libels him, so I'd say he favors free speech. :)

I dunno. Even after being aware of him since my teens, sometimes I'm still not sure what to make of the guy.

News is what someone doesn't want published

All else is publicity.

It's a big issue, ignoring this commercial for "Fark" (which I hadn't heard mentioned in years). There are very few US newspapers left with much news. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are about it.

The San Jose Mercury News used to be one of the last remaining local papers with real reporting, but since Knight-Ridder sold it to some suburban throwaway publisher, it's had very little real content. Most of the reporters are gone.

The real test is this: did the story originate with a press release or a press conference? If it did, it's publicity. Take a printed newspaper and mark the non-wire-service ads for which this is not the case. There won't be many such stories. In some papers, there won't be any.

slashdot farked black hole of unintentional DDoS

I stopped reading Fark after they started censoring *that* special number. Plus they took away boobies links and seemed to start removing any image that showed more than an inch of female cleavage.

It used to be a fun low IQ flamewar filled insight into the minds of folks who would argue the relative hotness and sharp-kneed attributes of any female media celebrity. Some of the threads were freaking hilarious and definitely made my difficult work days a little easier.

In my opinion Fark has made some terrible decisions lately: Fark "TV", terrible redesign without any user feedback, increasing censorship and more paid links. I hated the decision, but it's gone from my bookmarks.

Makes me remember my love for /.

I smell a sellout to Google or someone

What with the new look that everyone hates, moderation up the wazoo, ever oppressive naughty word filters and sponsored links. Looks to be like ol Drunk Drew is getting ready to sell out, cash in, and drink up.

Fark: cancerous meme source of the net

I work for Drew Curtis Presents Fark.com, so I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about. But trust me.... You don't. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about. This is how bad info gets passed around. If you don't know about the topic....Don't make yourself sound like you do. Cuz some slashdotters believe anything they hear.

Yup.

You've fallen victim to an inside joke. See here. [wikipedia.org] Scroll down to "I work for."

Fearmongering, Contradiction, and Ads

Is this book a clever ruse for the internet predators to sneak in and rape your children? The answer may surprise you. Buy this book and find out.

For more thorough insight into "newsiness"

I recommend that you examine some of the books in this "So you want to..." Amazon blurb [amazon.com] if you're looking into further insight into how mass media manipulates the news to their own ends.

In the meantime, I'll be avoiding clicking on Rugbyjock's entries.

Am I the only one . . .

. . . who has never even heard of Fark?

I'm off to look for it right now . . . .

and someone would spend good money on this?

...and someone would spend good money on this because?

I'm thinking of just blocking out the SlashDot reviews; I've been on here for the better part of a decade and still haven't been moved to read, much less buy, any of the crappy, non-searchable dead tree products SlashDot shills for in this category.

It's not Fark

It's BanniNation [bannination.com] Formed by a number of posters from fark who had finally had it with the way Drew runs Fark. It's a user-moderated fark-ish site, and IMO, has a much better community feel than fark does. It's nice being able to discuss a topic without worrying about the banstick coming down on your head.

Drew Curtis' shark jumping dot com

I was an avid Fark user since 2001. I will no longer even hit the front page, as they have neutered Fark and alienated many of their loyal readers by instituting a new ban system without informing people what it was. Pictures that were *always* considered "safe for work" (such as the attention whore girl, are now deemed NSFW, and posters are banned without explanation. As one poster here has already mentioned the whole "you'll get over it" redesign was a bit of an odd approach, but I could live with that, what I cannot live with is the extra crappy censorship they have rolled out. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, as I loved visiting the site because it was a small bastion of free speech. Now they have chosen to eliminate that, fuck 'em.......

Good subject

I like the topic, too bad the book doesn't seem worth anything. I started out as a Journalism major and after 2 years of that I realized how I was rewarded (straight A's) for writing BS papers 30 minutes before class that I knew were completely wrong and morally disagreeable. (I switched to CS after I realized what a joke the journalism field was.) As long as you are citing someone else for reference you can selectively choose anything to make such a bias "news" piece that it will be publically acceptable. General media isn't geared to inform objectively anymore. Capping newspapers to 8th grade reading level, selectively chosing sources, and lazy investigations about one side of the story because it's more accessible is a serious downfall. Don't even get me started on television news, somehow 30 minutes of random sound clips and bad b-roll keeps me informed? I don't think so.
The problem that I see in the media, that hits home to most /.ers, is a combination of zero accountability (mods), and crappy moderators when they are in place. I have a choice in which bias opinion I watch, I don't have a location to form my own opinion without a lot more work. Add to that the network ratings are counted in thousands and a single letter coming in to the news station from a field expert telling them they don't know jack... there doesn't seem to be any insentive to even make a correction these days. Does anyone know of accountability actions for bad/misinformed/misleading journalism?

I HATE TO SOUND LIKE A BROKEN RECORD

But Al Gore's "Assault On Reason" explores this in the first chapter. The rest of his book is, of course, a political piece on the Bush administration. But, to be fair, he doesn't give them any criticism they don't deserve. Anyway, the first chapter explores why the current news media has gotten the country in the mess it is in and the last chapter provides some hope for the future.

To be even more fair ...

But Al Gore's "Assault On Reason" explores this in the first chapter. The rest of his book is, of course, a political piece on the Bush administration. But, to be fair, he doesn't give them any criticism they don't deserve.

To be even more fair, it'd be tough these days to write a book called "The Assault on Reason" [powells.com] without writing a lot about the Bush Administration. It'd be sort of like writing about elephants without mentioning the one in everyone's living room.

The book is redundant

anyone with an above average IQ can spot the bias and non-news items pretending to be the news.

At Uncyclopedia, we bring you UnNews [uncyclopedia.org] that parodies real news to show how fake the real news companies have become. UnNews is your up to the minute source of news misinformation.

Jumped the Shark

So when, exactly, did Fark jump the shark? Was it the first time the site was picked up by the mainstream media? Or the second time? Now that there is a "book" (and I use the term only because of its physical prescence, not its actual usefullness as a piece of reference) about Fark and what Drew did before and what he thinks about the rest of the mainstream media (because he is now part of it), the shark has been truly jumped and gone.... So what is the next site? Any predictions?

It can't be that bad

SO there are a bunch of threads that have little meaning. It has to make a better gift than a HOT COCOA SAMPLER BOX.

write about that

fark is fucked

i love the discussions on fark, but it's ruined by the fact the website is a piece of shit that 9 times out of 10 will give you a database down or busy message. It's unusable.

Pointy knees

This book has pointy knees. Fark lost its charm. They should take a hint from Digg and do what the readers want, whatever the consequences. Or cash in and become irrelevant. (inset of picture of relevant user news site.)

What is Fark?

It would have been useful for the reviewer to briefly outline what Fark is and what its context is. I have been net-enabled since 1994 and never heard of Fark, but in reading some of it briely, I did laugh a fair amount.

Some background would have been helpful.

I for one ...

I for one welcome our new book writing overlord.

How...

How is this news?

Re:BBC = advertisement free

The BBC are definitely on the better end of journalism, that being both reason for and symptom of its betterness. The fact that every single Prime Minister of England hated the BBC is another piece of evidence that it's pretty awesome.

Re:Who knows but we sure do.

"Who knows but we sure do. "

Thats from the article.

No, That's on second.