Fifteen Minutes Of Media Frenzy
If you are an avid news consumer (and you probably are if you’re reading this) you know that there’s always a healthy dose of bizarre news out there. There are entire Web sites devoted to it. But even if you don’t visit Newsoftheweird.com on a regular basis, you probably heard this piece of bizarre news last week: “Passenger Bites Man, Jumps From Moving Plane,” read the headline at CNN.com, where the story was the fifth most popular on that site Tuesday. Maybe you didn’t even read the whole story because, like much of the weird news you encounter, you thought, “Damn, that’s weird,” and went about your business. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you clicked on it right away, or immediately stopped changing channels to watch it. In that case, you likely know who Paul Sigler is. Well, maybe you don’t remember his name -- he’s the guy who was bitten by the other passenger, Troy Rigby. But the bite is a part of the story that Sigler says was hyped by the media far more than it should have been.
Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
