NYT or TMZ? Who can tell anymore.
Kenneth Eugene Mosher, 66, a farmer in Aurora, Iowa, was killed yesterday when a man driving a pick up truck rear ended the tractor Mr. Mosher was driving. This is very sad, very local news. So it’s strange that it made it’s way across the country to me, someone who studiously avoids current events at almost any cost. It turns out that the only reason the story travelled as far as it did is because the guy driving the pick up truck used to be on The Bachelor.
I wouldn’t have known anything about it in the first place if my attention hadn’t been snagged by a sidebar headline on some website I’d fallen into via a completely unrelated link on Twitter. I hate to admit it but it was the reference to The Bachelor that caught my eye (sorry to say but I’m a sucker for “click bait”), and I opened the story before reading its full title. I was saddened to discover that what I thought was going to be a salacious tidbit about the second biggest set of fame whores on television turned out to be the news of this terrible accident. Mr. Mosher died as a result of the crash, and though the driver who hit him called 911, the man eventually fled the scene and was arrested as a result.
The full title of the article I read is "‘The Bachelor’ Star Chris Soules Arrested After Deadly Crash”. What rag decided to exploit some poor guy’s tragic passing just to garner “hits” off of Bachelor junkies, I wondered. Imagine my surprise when I found myself in the Arts section of The New York Times.
I have very fond memories of reading the Arts section when I was growing up. My mom would cut out articles and mail them to me in college; I’ve still got most of those clippings packed away in a box somewhere. This kind of manipulative exploitation is what I’d expect from TMZ (who of course are the ones who released the 911 recording), not the NYT. That doesn’t excuse the bile that TMZ promotes but at least I know what to expect when I pass through their orbit.
Now, I understand that publishers need to generate a butt-ton of online content to stay relevant, content which would not normally garner inches in a printed paper, and I get that journalism is a cutthroat business. But the Arts section? For a story about a reality TV star from two years ago? A story that treats the victim like a side note.
In the end, the part that makes my stomach sour is that in my brief online investigation, including a Google search of his full name, Heavy.com is the only publication I found that put Kenneth Mosher’s name in the title of their article, that made their story about him, not just the fake celebrity - and very real human being & neighbor who is no doubt horrified and devastated by the consequences of his actions - who happened to hit him.
My deepest condolences to the Mosher family. <3
