The unbearable lightness of the Balloon coverage

[Nevilledog]

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/balloon_media_coverage.php

“Are Twitter’s birthday balloons broken?” “Weather grounds balloons Sunday morning, 2023 Hudson Hot Air Affair still a success.” “Release of balloons would be banned under new Florida bill.” Across the US, various balloons have been in the news in recent days, cropping up in stories about, for instance, the perceived mirthlessness of Elon Musk and the wellbeing of sea turtles. But recent headlines have been dominated by one balloon, in particular—to the extent that, as sometimes happens with otherwise common words in news coverage, it picked up a definite article and shed associated adjectives, becoming simply “The Balloon.” (See also: “The Queue” that formed in London after the death of the Queen.) In case you were living under a rock last week, I’m referring to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated from West to East over the US, sparking a diplomatic ruckus and capturing the attention of a nation. (Incidentally, if you were living under a rock last week, congrats: you were safe from The Balloon. Probably.)

The US news media’s first recorded sighting of The Ballon (that I can find, anyway) came last Wednesday, when Larry Mayer of the Billings Gazette, a local newspaper in Montana, photographed it as it appeared in the sky over that state. At that point, Mayer didn’t know what he was photographing. President Biden had already been briefed on The Balloon but his administration had decided not to go public with the sighting just yet; that changed on Thursday, when the Gazette published Mayer’s photo and it became, as Bloomberg put it, “only a matter of time until national media would pick up on the report.” (Not that the national media has a good recent track record of picking up local news stories about mystifying objects full of hot air, but I digress.) The confirmation of The Balloon triggered a chain reaction of diplomatic consequences: Chinese officials claimed that it was a meteorological balloon that had been blown off course; no one in the US really bought this, not least Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, who canceled a forthcoming trip to China. It also triggered loud outrage in right-wing political and media circles. (Indeed, per Bloomberg, the outrage was a big part of the reason that Blinken scrapped his China trip.) “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON,” Donald Trump yelled into Truth Social. “POP THIS BALLOON!” the front page of the New York Post demanded.

The Biden administration may eventually have gone public with the news of The Balloon, but beyond that—and the insistence that The Balloon did not pose any immediate military threat—officials did not disclose much. At a press briefing on Friday, which CNN carried live, Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, mostly declined to elaborate as reporters peppered him with questions. “Can you confirm, the photos that are out there, that this is not the Man in the Moon and that is the actual balloon?” one journalist asked. “I’m certainly aware of photos being posted online,” Ryder responded, with an admirably straight face. “I’m not going to get into the business of confirming where those photos come from.” Another reporter asked if the location of The Balloon was classified; Ryder acknowledged that “the public certainly has the ability to look up in the sky and see where the balloon is,” but declined to tell people where to look. “We’re just not going to get into an hour-by-hour where the balloon is,” Ryder added.

Meanwhile, cable news was palpably desperate to get into an hour-by-hour of where The Balloon was. At times, the coverage evoked that of the OJ Bronco chase, if the Bronco had been sensitive to changing wind dynamics and the pundits invited on air to talk about it had had military medals strapped to their chests; more directly, it recalled coverage of the “Balloon Boy” incident of 2009, when a balloon that was said to have a child inside, but actually did not, drifted over Colorado. The spy Balloon was “the perfect story for American cable TV,” Jeremy Goldkorn, the editor in chief of the China Project, noted on Friday—because, in addition to being something mysterious moving through space, “it’s from China, it’s got spy cameras, and it full of hot air or happy gas. This is going to go on for days.” As it happened, The Balloon, if not the media hubbub around it, met its end on Saturday, when the Pentagon finally took the advice of the New York Post and shot it down, over the Atlantic. Major networks had hours of special coverage. “Our long national nightmare is over,” MSNBC’s Katy Tur said. “We got The Balloon.”

*snip*

[betsuni]

1. I thought of the "Balloon Boy" incident. Also that the balloon should say "Happy Birthday."

[Nevilledog]

2. Saw a meme of the balloon popping & showing pink smoke as a gender reveal