Can you give me examples of things that were hyped up in the media that turned out to be unfounded?

[arcadian]

For instance, something that was driven into the ground and then the next week, no mention whatsoever.

[tekisui]

1. Y2K?

[BlooInBloo]

2. WMD.

[dalaigh lllama]

3. terror alerts?

[valerief]

4. Communism. nt

[CatsDogsBabies]

5. cnn really went to town about a solar flare right after

the Heaven's Gate suicide. I never watched CNN much after that.

[dem629]

6. "Summer of the shark"..."summer of kidnappings"

Just to name a couple.

The "summer of the shark" actually saw fewer shark attacks than normal. (Here's one source: http://www.sptimes.net/2002/02/19/news_pf/State/Fewer_shark_attacks_c.shtml)

The "summer of kidnappings" actually saw fewer kidnappings than usual, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (Here's one source: http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/08/07/kidnapping/index.html)

The media loves hype stories. People panic and watch more.

[Fumesucker]

15. Summer of the shark, indeed..

I remember that one, summer of 2001.

I remember what happened afterward too.

Watch the shiny object I'm distracting you with, never mind what my other hand is doing.

[Catshrink]

7. The cap and trade thing

Bachman :puke: was saying it would cost the average family ad additional $3000 or so in fuel costs a year. She's not smart enough to come up with that number so I don't know who or what is behind it. But I heard her blab on about it on the teevee.

[liberalmuse]

8. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, 'Terror', compassionate conservatism...

Too many to list.

[muntrv]

9. "Obama is not a natural born US citizen."

[Maccagirl]

10. Clinton's $200 haircut on AF1 while "thousands" of LAX

passengers/planes were forced to wait. A complete BS lie (told by CNN's John King) and it was ran into the ground for about a week. I don't recall any apology/retraction by the media when the whole story was finally told. Dee Dee Myers was a terrible press secretary as well.
Reading Time/Newsweek at that time (actually the entire Clinton admin) was like reading the National Inquirer i.e "Hillary threw a broken lamp at Bill during an arguement...". No wonder health care failed.

[Mike 03]

11. Too many to mention

Recent ones:

Imminent terrorist event at the G20 summit in England. There was "no doubt" about it.

Proliferation of Mad Cow disease in England, which was projected to wipe out most of the population by 2005.

Y2K, obviously.

Planet X collision with earth.

Solar flares fry our planet, we all die.

Greenland splintering and collapsing (which I still worry about)

Yellowstone Cauldron erupting, which was supposed to kill everyone within a 500 mile radius.

Major earthquake in Los Angeles by year 1999. 9.0 on the richter scale.

Total collapse of San Andreas Fault, either north or south.

[bananas]

13. Britain incinerated millions of cows to stop Mad Cow disease

It was not "unfounded" hype, it was a very serious problem.

[annabanana]

12. Those stupid color-coded "terror alerts" . . . pure propaganda. . .n/t

[Toucano]

14. Summer 2001: Shark attacks

They were true, of course, but HYPED way out of proportion.

[Arugula Latte]

18. Now when the Land Sharks come for us, that'll be newsworthy!

[cali]

16. sensationalism is the name of the game when it comes to the MSM

[Sheets of Easter]

27. From what I've seen here in GD in the last several hours,

it's not just the media.

[Dervill Crow]

17. Killer bees invading the entire continental United States.

Methicillin-resistant Staph aureus.

A Big Earthquake.

Gang-related shootings and the dangers of allowing your children to wear certain colors or say certain words.

[omega minimo]

19. Ronald Reagan

:thumbsdown:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. President Hillary Clinton.

[rug]

21. Anthrax.

[rustydog]

22. 2001: Bush surrounding himself with the best and brightest

"The grownups are back in charge" remember?

[Arugula Latte]

24. A sub-issue of that was "Bush spent a lot of time pondering stem cell research."

I remember the media falling all over themselves to tell us that Bush THOUGHT about the issue and CONSIDERED it and was very CAREFUL in his decision making ... Yeah, right. They'd decided to suppress science as a bone-toss to the fundies well before the election.

[Cresent City Kid]

23. Martian asteroid with signs of life

No martians here, just a pod in my garage, and a distant look in my wife's eyes.

[Sheets of Easter]

25. Kohoutek

[baldguy]

26. The disappeared blond white girl.

Never mind all the disappeared girls with somewhat darker skin.

[arcadian]

30. Good point. You'll never hear anything about the crisis in Juarez

Something like 300 murdered women, that probably being the low end number.

[proud patriot]

28. "be on the alert for scuba divers"

:think:

[MindPilot]

29. "ritual satanic abuse"

Remember in the eighties all those stories of recovered memories, McMartin pre-school, Dale Akiki...?

[Forkboy]

31. That's the best kind of satanic abuse.

I hate the haphazard "let's just do the satanic abuse whenever" mentality. x(

[Starry Messenger]

32. Killer attack honeybees.

They do exist, but the Matrix scale swarm attacks on the entire nation that get trotted out every few years never seem to come about.

[virginia mountainman]

33. Gun Show loophole..

Gun shows are not some mythical place where federal and state gun laws do not apply.....

Cop Killer bullets...
What bullshit, a Teflon coated bullet, makes it easier to clean the gun after shooting, but has ZERO EFFECT on the bullet lethality good, or bad, once it gets out of the barrel of the gun.

Plastic guns....
The BIGGEST BULLSHIT STORY of the early 1990's, NO GUNS, are completely made out of plastic, even Glocks with their plastic frames, have a very bulky, heavy STEEL Slide and Barrel, that would make it show up BIG TIME on any xray gear.

And after all the dust settled, Glocks became one of the most popular Police, and self defense guns in the US.

[PerfectSage]

34. The US military is the greatest military ever.

Most over rated piece of narcisistic shit military ever. The pentagon has the world's most dysfunctional organizational culture after the fall of communism.

General Pegayus is the penultimate careerist fuck the system up the ass useless piece of overated shit yet.

[go west young man]

35. I've got a few...

1)H5N1 Avian Bird Flu
2)West Nile Virus the summer before that.
3) Mad Cow disease a few years before that one.
4) Eric Carr who the media got totally wrong.
5) Mark Foley-got away with the crime and the media never covered the fact he got off scott free.
6) Joe Scarboroughs dead intern- instead we got Chandra Levy and a Dem senator on trial.
7) Bill O'Reillys vibrator use. The media chose not to go too deep on that one.
8) All the wedding partys we bombed in Afghanistan were pretty much ignored.
9) The DC madames death and the fact that she died while David Vitter got to stay in power.
10) Ted Haggerts meth up his ass.
11) The lies that got us into war. Still ignored.