ROUND ONE
Boner Candidate #1: HE SPARKED IT RIGHT UP. IT WAS CRAZY!
LEBANON, Tenn. (WTVF) — Wilson County Sheriff Robert Ryan said inmate Spencer Alan Boston appeared in court Monday on a marijuana possession charge. When Boston approached the bench to discuss his sentence, Ryan said that’s when Boston pulled the marijuana from his pocket in front of the general sessions judge. As the court officers quickly approached him, the inmate began talking about his desire to see marijuana legalized in Tennessee. “One of the craziest things I’ve seen,” Ryan said. The sheriff said Boston was led out of the courtroom through a small cloud of smoke. He was booked on a second charge of simple possession and received 10 days for contempt of court.
Boner Candidate #2: WANNA SEE THE CRASH FOOTAGE? IT’S REALLY GUESOME.
SAN DIEGO — A deceiving video claiming to show the helicopter crash that killed nine people, including Kobe Bryant and his daughter, is spreading across social media. The deceptive video shows a chopper spinning out of control before bursting into flames. However, the footage is actually that of a chopper that clipped the Ras al-Khaimah wire near Dubai in 2018. The four crew members on board of that helicopter were all killed in the fiery crash. The unrelated footage is creating outrage promoting calls for the video to be taken down. Kobe Bryant, 41, and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, were killed in a helicopter crash Sunday morning in Calabasas. The former Los Angeles Lakers star is among nine people who died in the crash.
Boner Candidate #3: HIS ABILITY TO LEAD WAS SECOND TO NONE.
The Grand Valley State University coach told the school newspaper that the way Hitler “was able to lead was second-to-none.” Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, suspended new football coach Morris Berger on Monday after he said in an interview with the school’s student-run paper that the way Adolf Hitler “was able to lead was second-to-none” and that “you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader.” Berger was announced last week as the new offensive coordinator for the college’s Lakers football team. In an interview published Thursday in the Grand Valley Lanthorn, Berger said if he could have dinner with any historical figures, one would be Hitler. “If you could have dinner with three historical figures, living or dead, who would they be?” Lanthorn student reporter Kellen Voss asked. “This is probably not going to get a good review, but I’m going to say Adolf Hitler,” Berger responded. “It was obviously very sad and he had bad motives, but the way he was able to lead was second-to-none. How he rallied a group and a following, I want to know how he did that. Bad intentions of course, but you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader.”
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ROUND TWO
Boner Candidate #1: WELL, YOU WEREN’T WRONG BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU WERE RIGHT.
The gossip and celebrity news site TMZ was first with the news that Kobe Bryant had died Sunday in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, Calif. The report was so early, in fact, that many social media users questioned its accuracy. TMZ wasn’t wrong. Mr. Bryant was killed along with eight other people, including his 13-year-old daughter. But that didn’t spare TMZ from criticism even after the news was confirmed: Alex Villanueva, the Los Angeles County sheriff, said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon that the authorities had not contacted Mr. Bryant’s family before TMZ published its report. “It would be extremely disrespectful to understand your loved one has perished and to learn about it from TMZ,” Mr. Villanueva said. “That is just wholly inappropriate.”
Whenever a big story breaks, news organizations have to gauge how fast is too fast. For reports on tragedies, journalists face the issue of whether or not to put their drive to be first above sensitivity toward victims and members of their family. With the breakneck pace of reporting ushered in by digital media, reporters looking to be first also put themselves at risk of publishing or broadcasting false reports, a pitfall that was in evidence as journalists competed to confirm the death of the 41-year-old basketball star so famous that he went by one name.
Boner Candidate #2: MARY LOUISE KELLY…YOU’RE OFF THE FLIGHT
The secretary of state unleashed an expletive-laden tirade against another NPR reporter last week after she asked him about Ukraine. The State Department removed an NPR reporter from the press corps that will travel to Europe and Asia with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week, just days after he angrily confronted one of the news organization’s journalists for asking questions about Ukraine. Shaun Tandon, the president of the State Department Correspondents’ Association, said Monday that Michele Kelemen, NPR’s diplomatic correspondent, had been barred from the trip, which will see the secretary travel to Britain, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia. Tandon said the timing appeared to be direct retaliation after Pompeo unleashed a profanity-laden tirade toward another NPR reporter, Mary Louise Kelly, last week after she asked about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yavanovitch.
Boner Candidate #3: THEM PUPPIES ARE JUST TIRED….REAL TIRED.
WEST JORDAN, Utah — The West Jordan Police Department said the Animal Control division has an open investigation into a puppy store after a video surfaced online that the department is calling “concerning.” The store said the puppies were sleepy, but the customer who took the video wonders if something else was going on. Austin Ewell said he and his family, along with a family friend, ate dinner next door to The Puppy Store on Friday. “My daughter, she’s seven, was really excited about The Puppy Store, so why not?” he explained. They made an impromptu puppy stop after dinner, and Austin said everything was fine and normal at first. However soon into their visit, Austin described how he noticed something off with most of the dogs for sale in the store.
He took a video of what he saw. “This dog is drugged,” Austin is heard saying in the video. His cell phone is pointed toward completely unresponsive puppies. Austin’s friend picks up one of the dog’s arms and lightly shakes it. The dog doesn’t move and its arm is limp. “They’re all sedated,” Austin says in the video. “You’d grab the paw, and it wouldn’t respond. And then you’d physically move the arm, and it wouldn’t respond. And then you’d move the body, and it wouldn’t respond,” he recounted. “And that’s when I was like, ‘Something’s not right.’”
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