Ballon Boy or Bust

On October 15th of this year, the world was captivated by the ongoing sage of little Falcon Heene. His frazzled parents popped up on the television proclaiming their son was missing and may be up in a silver balloon flying in the sky. The web was flooded with chatter and prayer chains for the family, and people watched the balloon fly in the sky for hours until the anticlimactic end. So what was the end? Little Falcon was hiding in the garage, supposedly upset or scared because his father has yelled at him earlier that day. So the local and national news outlets also aired the tearful reunion, and the Heenes thanked the people watching and praying for their family. At first, this seemed like a strange, yet genuine ordeal.

But then the discrepancies rolled out. First, reporters noted that the Heene family was featured on ABC's WifeSwap in 2008. Many were speculating that maybe this was their attempt at further publicity. Then just hours after the incident happened when the Heenes were being interviewed by CNN about the ordeal, Falcon was asked why didn't he come out of the garage if he heard his family yelling for him, and he replied that he did it for a show! The Heenes looked uncomfortable and tried to brush his comment off. Here is the footage:

Then on the Sunday after the incident (10/18/09), the Larimer County (CO) Sheriff;s department raided the Heene's home. To make matters worse, it was revealed that on October 23 it was revealed that the wife and mother of the Heene family, Mayumi, admitted that the whole ordeal was a hoax to the police.

On November 13, Richard Heene and Mayumi Heene pleaded guilty to felony(Richard tried to influence a sheriff, while Mayumi is being charged with filing a false police report) and misdemeanor charges, respectively. This is an ongoing story and only time will tell what happens next.

So how did this get into the national media anyway. I think because our society likes the unusual. When something crazy happens, with today's technology, news of it travels fast. What aggravates me about this whole situation is that the media devoted so much time to this story, which ended up being BS when there could have been screen time for more important news! There used to be a fine line between tabloid type news and real news and now that line is very blurry. It may be escapism. People don't want to think about the real issues.