Thoughts on Poca

I posted the link to this article and video regarding the Poca case in the newsgroup yesterday.

This set off an interesting discussion which set my mind to wandering. The discussion has been in regards to the dynamics of the people involved, including the foster parents, the real parents and CPS, etc. But I do think that some are missing the point.

Poca, you see, is a little four year old foster child who first appeared on the airwaves back in April of 2009. I do gotta say though, Susannah Frame, the investigative reporter for King 5 in Seattle Washington who has done this ongoing series of investigative reports has, over these past several months, done a great job of tugging on your heart strings in an effort to sell you a line of bullshit.

Let me break it all down for you so that you understand what I mean.

Here is the whole series of videos in chronological order by date, prior to the link I provided earlier in this post. There are a total 12 reports and lots of of tears, and will probably take a half hour to go through them all.



Now if you actually watched all of that, and taking into consideration that they originally played out over several months time. Yet when you put them all together, they tell more of a story. And you're probably thinking of Poca, or Amy Langely. Perhaps your happy the kid went home, perhaps you're sad for the heartbreak the the Langely's have endured through all of this by falling in love with the child and thinking that somehow gives them some sort of entitlement to the child simply because it took CPS so long to reunify the family. I don't know.

But especially notice how they show lots and lots of tears.

Now why is this important? Because emotion is what sells the bullshit that you buy. The tears are the method that they use to get to the heart of the sheep. By doing this, the sheep are more apt to fall for the bullshit. And thus we have the manufacturing of public support for some concept. And they do it over and over again because they're professionals, and that's what these kinds of professionals in the news field does.

The tears is the key. And as I previously said, they're selling you a line of bullshit, in this particular case they are using the tears of Amy Langley to somehow manufacture support for more rights for foster contractors or something.

Now. I'm not saying that this Susannah Frame Reporter Person is an emotion junkie or anything, but I have picked up on how she uses emotion and all the tears to sell whatever concept she is trying t sell. And she's damn good at it.

Now, Susannah Frame, this particular reporter from King 5 also did another series on an earlier case, which I will present to you in a moment. In this series of six investigative reports about a couple of grandparents who regain custody of the child from CPS.

In this next series of reports we also have what is called a raw video. This particular clip is 9 minutes and 16 seconds of taping and probing for highly charged and emotional footage, which will be taken and edited into future fast paste and sensationalized news reports. And presented to you in a particular way designed to tug on the heart strings of the sheep in order to wind them over to ones side of a particular issue. Once the video gets going, this reporter starts asking questions. Listen carefully to the types of questions she asks. Then notice how they take tons of video to get split second clips to use in the actual report. And pay particularly close attention to how they use highly charged emotional statements in order to sell a concept which in this particular case is not a line of bullshit.



You see, it's all in the presentation. It's about capturing your attention and cutting into a commercial. It's about guiding public perception and controlling social development. It's about pulling on your heart strings. You want to know more. You formulate an opinion. And because humans accept the reality which they are shown regularly on television, most will formulate the opinion that the presentation is designed to formulate.

And that is how they sell you a line of bullshit.