Bye, bye black sheep

The only reason I'm mentioning this nothingburger of an anti-Obama protest in Arizona is because it's a perfect illustration of how click-bait journalism is destroying the former profession of news gathering. The deceptive headline at the link screams -- "Hundreds protest Obama" -- but not all of them were crackpots singing "Bye, Bye, Black Sheep" or hollering about impeaching the 47% Negro. Which by the way, is not at all racist because somebody had a Mexican grandson there.

And "hundreds" would be stretching the description of the turnout. The TV cameramen are good at framing the shots to make the crowd look bigger, but Steve M finds video from the anti-Obama group, that isn't as skillfully skewed.


By the end there may have been a couple hundred or so people, but many of them were there to protest on behalf of their pet causes, (like killing the XL pipeline), and you could hear the competeing cheers for Obama across the street while the crackpots were booing right in front of their little videographer.

This non-story was picked up by all the local affiliates of the national networks. So okay, it's August and there no other "news" to cover, but what really rankles is if this had been a pro-Obama rally of 10K, you could bet money none of the big media would have even mentioned it.