Have you known someone who made "headlines"?

[CoffeeCat]

I was wondering if any DUers have ever known an "average person" who became the subject of
a well-known media story?

I'm not talking about knowing a movie star. I'm wondering if anyone has
known an average person who became famous or well-known due to an event
(positive or negative) that propelled them into the spotlight--local or national.

The MSM covers so many tragedies, crimes and personal stories--and dishes those
events out as entertainment.

I imagine that being on the receiving end of that media attention must be
really difficult and a bit surreal.

I wonder if these people feel as if the media portrayed them accurately and
treated them fairly?

Anyone have any thoughts?

[EFerrari]

1. It is surreal because it's so managed. Whatever your story is,

it gets flattened out and amplified at the same time.

[water]

2. I don't know anyone who has been in a well-known story, but my hometown paper...

... the Austin-American Statesman, is notorious for shoddy reporting. In every single case in which my friends or I have known something personally about the case, they get several facts wrong (like names, dates, or relationships, or mis-attributing quotes).

[REP]

3. A few, but they were all dead

One was one of the brothers of my ex. His lover began shooting people, and he shot the shooter and then himself. It was big news, not just because of the bizarreness of shooter going on his spree, but because he was gay. The treatment of my ex's brother (the one who shot the shooter and then himself) was sympathetic.

The other was a friend of he family who was well-known artist who died in a freak accident. Coverage was accurate.

[PinkTiger]

4. I've known two, and both are now dead.

The first was a guy named Smitty, who was on the Johnny Carson Show in the 1980s for being an 80-year-old skydiver. He came into the bar where I worked all the time. He was a blowhard. He finally died of natural causes, but he was a fixture for sometime on Johnny Carson, came several times. Another was George Foster, who found a Century-old bearer bond in the hotel he purchased, payable by the County. He figured out it was worth several million by now, as it had never been cashed. He got national prominence and was on Carson twice. He lived in my county.

So--- yes, I've known at least two. I know other famous folks, but these people were truly the Andy Warhold type, famous for fifteen minutes type.

Both George and Smitty loved the attention and the spotlight.

I've also known some people who became famous because of circumstance, and they hated the media attention. (I was a news reporter for many years, so I met many of these people.)
Everyone thinks the media distorts and lies, whether it does or not. It is a connundrum.

[alfredo]

5. Yes. A friend made the CBS evening news.

he took a bathtub sized across the Atlantic.

Had one friend profiled on the WSJ front cover.

One became a well known body builder, had his own TV spot. He won Mr Olympia one year. Heard he passed away some years after we went our separate ways.

[baldguy]

6. I had a friend whose father-in-law was the central figure in a local scandal.

Without going into details - nearly every aspect of the story, the people involved and the circumstances leading up to it were misrepresented in the media.

What I learned was that more often than not reporters don't really know any more about a particular event than you do, and the stories they present about it only serve to fill up space in a newspaper or time on a TV broadcast.

[murielm99]

7. Yes.

There was a nasty incident in my community when I was in high school. The man involved was a neighbor.

An eight-year-old girl was murdered. She was stabbed many, many times. It was a horrendous crime. If she had been a child today, not forty years ago, she probably would have been medicated. She had many behavior problems, making life difficult for her teachers, parents, and peers. I know she had out of control tantrums. No one seemed to be doing anything about her. But maybe no one knew what to do.

Her teacher was accused of the murder. There were numerous stories in the paper, and they were not accurate. There were stories that he had burned a large amount of pornography, and that he admitted to this. I don't know if he had a personal stash of porn, but as long as it was not child porn, and he kept it at home, I am not sure why this should have mattered. But this was a long time ago.

The local newspapers were out of control. Eventually, the case against him was thrown out of court. The judge said there was not enough evidence, and he made some very caustic remarks about how the man had been tried in the newspapers.

He lost his home and his job. He and his wife went to live on his father's farm, which was nearby. While he was helping his father with some chores, he found a dead baby in a box out in one of the fields. The papers reported it, but there was no media circus this time.

The little girl's murder was never solved.

[bigbrother05]

8. 4 years of our Last name on the front page

Mr. Bigbrother was on he local school board, and the admins, were a bunch Bush lights, now this was in East Texas, and Bush was the gov. The Local paper had been running a story on a principle that had been demoted over test results, the black community became involve and ended up having an investigation on how federal funds were being spent. Me and my husband walked into the middle of this.
Where do I start?
Let me put it this way We manipulated the Media,we had to to keep us in the game.
When we moved, four years later it was on the front page.
It was fun, exciting, exhillerating, exhausting, dangerous.
But we stayed away from the sensationalism.
The story was not about us, but we were drug into it.
So we were treated fair by the media, but were avoided like the plaque in the community.
This is the very short version.
Thanks for asking

[electricmonk]

9. A couple both crime related

One guy I knew killed 5 people at a New Year's Eve party. That one made CNN just because it was New Year's Eve. Any other time a multiple homicide is just another crime. He was an oddball but the local media made him sound like Norman Bates.

The other case was a friend of mine was murdered by her boyfriend who happened to be a singer in a punk band. That one was on A Current Affair but I didn't have a tv and was living in a different city at the time so I don't know how the media handled it.

[americanstranger]

10. I was involved in the 'Miserable Failure' Google Bomb.

(Actually, George Johnson started it, but through search engines, my blog got associated with it.)

When that story hit the news, I got calls from NY Newsday, the NY Daily News, the NY Times and the AP. I also got a call to appear on BBC Radio.

It was pretty weird for a couple of days. People I hadn't heard from in years were calling me to tell me they read the story in their local papers. And some Freeper from Florida emailed me to threaten to tell my clients that I was anti-Bush in an effort to ruin my business.

Big surprise - he contacted them, and most of my clients laughed at him. I did lose one account with a company in Texas that had a lot of government contracts, but c'est la vie.

- as