You Da Man (on Da Street)

[Richard Chonak <rac@gabrielmass.com>]

Some time ago, Auntie Donna shared her article on media
hoaxers with us, so I'd be interested in getting her comments on another
kind of media manipulator.  

The Sunday NYT 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/nyregion/15GREG.html ,
reg. req.)
has a piece about Greg Packer, a Long Island highway worker whose hobby
is to make himself first in line at public events and win coverage as a
"man in the street".   And win he does:
a Westchester paper found his name mentioned 177 times in 
a news database.

The Wall Street Journal took up the media-ethics angle in 
its article about Packer today: for those of you 
with subscriptions, it's at:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB105569204828218700,00.html

The WSJ's Matthew Rose observes:

---quote---
News organizations often aren't choosy about how they get "man on the
street" material, in part because it's often decorative and sometimes
contrived. It's also easy to trick reporters who rarely if ever check up
on the "men on the street" they randomly quote. That's fertile ground
for Mr. Packer to exploit. "For some venues, it didn't matter what you
were getting as long as it was lively," says Roy Peter Clarke, a senior
scholar at the Poynter Institute [...]
---end quote---

With the Stern fans, Greg Packer, and media hoaxer 
Joey Skaggs, there's a whole cottage industry of people
probing and proving the weaknesses of media organizations.

--RC