NYT or TMZ? Who can tell anymore.
Kenneth Eugene Mosher, 66, a farmer in Aurora, Iowa, was killed yesterday when a man driving a pick up truck rear ended the tractor Mr. Mosher was driving. This is very sad, very local news. So itās strange that it made itās way across the country to me, someone who studiously avoids current events at almost any cost. It turns out that the only reason the story travelled as far as it did is because the guy driving the pick up truck used to be on The Bachelor.
I wouldnāt have known anything about it in the first place if my attention hadnāt been snagged by a sidebar headline on some website Iād fallen into via a completely unrelated link on Twitter. I hate to admit it but it was the reference to The Bachelor that caught my eye (sorry to say but Iām a sucker for āclick baitā), and I opened the story before reading its full title. I was saddened to discover that what I thought was going to be a salacious tidbit about the second biggest set of fame whores on television turned out to be the news of this terrible accident. Ā Mr. Mosher died as a result of the crash, and though the driver who hit him called 911, the man eventually fled the scene and was arrested as a result.
The full title of the article I read is "āThe Bachelorā Star Chris Soules Arrested After Deadly Crashā. What rag decided to exploit some poor guyās tragic passing just to garner āhitsā off of Bachelor junkies, I wondered. Imagine my surprise when I found myself in the Arts section of The New York Times.
I have very fond memories of reading theĀ Arts section when I was growing up. My mom would cut out articles and mail them to me in college; Iāve still got most of those clippings packed away in a box somewhere. This kind of manipulative exploitation is what Iād expect from TMZ (who of course are the ones who released the 911 recording), not the NYT. That doesnāt excuse the bile that TMZ promotes but at least I know what to expect when I pass through their orbit.
Now, I understand that publishers need to generate a butt-ton of online content to stay relevant, content which would not normally garner inches in a printed paper, and I get that journalism is a cutthroat business. But the Arts section? For a story about a reality TV star from two years ago? A story that treats the victim like a side note.
In the end, the part that makes my stomach sour is that in my brief online investigation, including a Google search of his full name, Heavy.comĀ is the only publication I found that put Kenneth Mosherās name in the title of their article, that made their story about him, not just the fake celebrity - and very real human being & neighbor who is no doubt horrified and devastated by the consequences of his actions - who happened to hit him.
My deepest condolences to the Mosher family. <3















