Yes, really. Apparently, that’s not just hyperbole: according to Influence Communication, a Montreal-based media analysis group, the saga of Rob Ford’s crack tape has become the biggest Canadian news story of the century abroad.
In order to try to contextualize this, Influence Communication estimated that the amount of media airtime devoted to Rob Ford’s crack scandal cost $1.1 billion in total. And you know what the really messed-up part is? That’s just from the month of November.
But wait! There’s more! As The Globe and Mail reports, if a very thorough and weirdly devoted person were to air all the television coverage of Ford’s crack scandal on a single broadcast network, they would have enough material to last for four years. As for print media, enough ink has been spilled about Ford to fill an entire newspaper. For an entire week. For six years.
While there’s no word how many blog posts/tweets/Facebook updates have been devoted to Ford, I’m guessing it’s close to surpassing porn as the most omnipresent aspect of the internet.
It’s easy to blame the media for turning this into a circus and going into overkill, but like it or not, this actually is news. The mayor of one of the biggest cities in North America getting caught smoking crack? Yes, of course it’s a ridiculous shit show, but Ford did that himself. But who knows? Maybe this will finally be the point where Ford turns it around and helps put a stop to the media clusterfuck.
Or maybe it can get much, much worse. That is a distinct possibility.
Why you can trust Xtra
