The human race loves a sensational story, and news broadcasts are quick to deliver. We sit wide-eyed, absorbing the newspaper, television, or computer screen and are barraged with the latest stories – each one more dramatic, tragic, or gruesome than the last. One could say that we love hearing these terrible things on the news because they cause us to examine our own lives and they create the stirring needed to make a change, but what happens when we find out a story we have been following is actually a well-planned hoax?

With every story of a lost child we are encouraged to keep a better eye on our own children, with stories of house fires we vow to buy new batteries for our smoke alarms, and in the cases of random acts of violence we tend to look towards our neighbors and wonder if they could be capable of the same. The fact is, in certain cases the media may create a positive change, but most of us do not consider our lives particularly exciting and treat the nightly news like a train wreck that is nearly impossible to look away from.

While this form of entertainment has been around for thousands of years and at one time involved lions tearing men apart in public or criminals being hung from trees in the town square, there is a valuable lesson to be learned from several big news stories in recent history. Certain people will do anything for their fifteen minutes of fame. They will lie in the face of the public eye, exploit their children, or even permanently disfigure their faces in the name of getting attention from the media.

Those of us sitting at home eating popcorn were captivated when “balloon boy” disappeared in his floating apparatus, and when a beautiful Washington woman had acid thrown in her face by a stranger causing severe and permanent scarring. We were equally distraught when the boy outed his parents’ stardom ambitions on live television and the woman admitted that the person she should have been protected from that day was herself. It is a terrible feeling to feel such empathy for these people and find out they have been playing the media in the name of fame and attention.

If there is something to learn from these hoaxes that have been perpetrated in the media recently, it is that no media source in the world is completely worthy of our trust. The news can be informative, entertaining, and should not be ignored, but this is a good time to take notice as a society what can occur when we take these stories as gospel truth and invest our time and emotion into the horrific fates of others. As in any other case when there is guaranteed exposure for someone, there will always be those who will take advantage and use it as a public cry for help or plea for attention.