Figuring Out the Angles

 

September 14, 2020

 

I posted about the man who was stranded in a lake and was saved by a group of priests floating by on a tiki bar.

Naturally, the image of priests on a floating tiki bar tickled people’s funnybones. But I looked at a few different sources for the story, and was fascinated at how the details each story offered depended on the writer’s point of view.

Here are some of the ways the story was presented:

 

The first story, by Fox News, mentioned that the man was hanging onto his kayak, his life jacket, and his new $1,400 cell phone. Naturally, you wonder, “If he’d dropped his cell phone, would it have helped him fight through?” I wondered why that detail had been included. The story says that the priests helped Tiki Tours staff help the kayaker.

 

NBC News in Washington didn’t mention the cell phone. It reported that the priests were on a break from a religious retreat, which the Fox News story had left out (giving the impression that the priests were partying down). NBC didn’t mention the staff of Tiki Tours performing the rescue, leaving the impression that the priests had hauled the man in by themselves.

 

The Catholic News Agency said that the man had been taking pictures on his cell phone, but didn’t mention the price, or that he was hanging onto it for dear life. CNA also noted that the priests were on a break from the retreat, and that they had assisted the Tiki Tours staff in the rescue, not performed it all by themselves. That story mentioned that the kayaker had drifted far from shore, but before he overturned, he waved on several boats that stopped to offer help.* CNA dealt with the tiki bar angle by writing that the priests were on a boat rented from Tiki Tours, giving the impression that the tiki bar was not the reason the priests were on that particular craft.

 

NBC and CNA both mentioned that the rescued man had been sober for 7 years, and that he thought that it was ironic that he’d been rescued by a tiki bar.

All the stories said that the participants in the drama credited divine intervention.

Nobody mentioned whether the priests had been imbibing.

 

My point, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that you should always check more than one source before you repeat a story. You never know what you might be missing, depending on what point of view the author is trying to present.

 

Try to get all the angles. And to figure out the angle of the person who’s writing the story.

 

 

 

*I am irresistibly reminded of the joke about the man stranded on the roof of his house during a flood. A rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter, at different times, all stop to offer assistance, and the man waves them on, saying each time, “The Lord will provide.” Eventually the man drowns, and when he gets to heaven he says, “Lord, I was counting on you to provide a rescue. Why didn’t you?” And the Lord says, “I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more did you want?” 

 (Luckily, our real-life kayaker eventually accepted help.)