(Thumbnail image from denverpost.com)
In just four days, Richard Heene, father of now-famous "Balloon Boy" Falcon Heene, has seen his image transformed in the media from a concerned father to a publicity-hungry dad more interested in attention than his own children’s well being. We’re looking at perspectives from ABC, CNN and CBS.
This wasn’t the first time the Heenes have been featured on national television. Twice in the past two years the family has appeared on the ABC reality show "Wife Swap".
Voice Over: Mom Mayumi is devoted to helping her fringe scientist husband Richard build a flying saucer and hunt for UFOs as they hope to find evidence supporting their belief that all humans are descended from aliens. (flash edit)
Mayumi: Justin is singing the song!
Richard: You’re lazy and you don’t want to do a damn thing. Mayumi started the project, she finished it, and you suck!
The controversy started Thursday night after Falcon Heene said on "Larry King Live" that the family did all this “for the show.” When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Richard Heene to clarify what Falcon meant by the comment, the father became visibly annoyed.
“Yeah, let me interrupt this real quick, because I think I can see the direction you guys are heading on this...We weren’t even going to do this interview, and I’m kind of appalled after all the feelings I went through, up and down, that you guys are trying to suggest something else.”
Also Friday morning, The CBS Early Show interviewed a clinical psychologist who said he was suspicious about how Richard Heene reacted when Falcon was supposedly missing.
“What makes me a little bit skeptical here is the interviews that you all did earlier today. We see the father who appears to be sobbing, but we don’t really see any tears. This is a guy who is supposed to run after storms and is an action character in the whole thing, but yet here he is, he can barely contain himself. We hear both he and his wife just don’t want to talk about this. So all of that to me says, ‘Maybe there’s something up here.’”
By Saturday afternoon, Heene was growing increasingly frustrated with the media and refused to answer their questions, instead placing a question box at his front door for them. But by Sunday afternoon, officials had announced that they now believed the whole incident was a publicity stunt. (WKRG)
Monday morning on the CBS Early Show, Harry Smith interviewed a former prosecutor who said the Heenes could be in danger of losing their children due to neglect.
"All they have to have is evidence of neglect or abuse, and boy, I think they’ve got plenty of that here, primarily because they subjected the children to participation in this fraud."
Finally on ABC’s show The View, Joy Behar said that if the balloon boy incident really was a publicity stunt, then it was very well done.
“This is the biggest PR stunt since Liza Minelli’s wedding. I could not take my eyes off of that flying Jiffy-Pop thing that was going. The entire news agencies were on it...It shows us how vulnerable we are to a hoax and we really don’t know if it’s a terrorist attack or it's not. We’re not sure now. It’s the tricks TV plays on you. Its brilliant really.”
So what do you think? Was the media too quick to believe the Heene’s story or should they have been more critical of the entire incident?
