SAVVYROO FOUNDER AND SEA CLIFF RESIDENT NOAH BLUMENTHAL'S TED TALK EXPOSES "THE DANGER OF HOT SEXY NEWS"

Picture
May 6, 2014 – Sea Cliff resident Noah Blumenthal's TED talk "The Danger of Hot Sexy News" was  released on the website SavvyRoo @TEDxUNLV  on Tuesday May 6.  In the 12 minute talk delivered on April 11 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas,  Mr. Blumenthal, co-founder of SavvyRoo.com, calls out news media for valuing slick debating tactics over building informed discussion and presents an alternative to "hot sexy news" in this age of arguetainment.  

“News today is an E! channel reality TV version of what it is supposed to be,” said Blumenthal. “It’s as though 20 years ago our news was taken over by the World Wrestling Federation. It’s not real. It’s just a paid performance designed to get us worked up rather than informed.”

The TEDx event and subsequent video come approximately one year after Blumenthal and co-founder Steve Ostermiller launched SavvyRoo.com, a social media website dedicated to helping news consumers, students, policy groups, think tanks and organizations find, create and share grounded, fact-based charts and graphs on the world’s most important issues.   

“Rhetoric, blame and argument are valued over simply getting to the truth,” Blumenthal said of our current news and media culture. “To get past the age of arguetainment we need to consume less rhetoric and more facts.”

In prepping for the TEDx event Blumenthal googled the word “newscasters” only to find that 3 of the top 5 search results were lists of newscasters who were hot or sexy, or who went insane during their broadcasts.

“Today’s divisive and sensational news amps up our emotions,” said Blumenthal. “It stops us from being able to hear or consider new information. We need to find sources of news that value evidence over rhetoric if we are to have any hope of finding common ground as a society.”

Giving citizens, the media and policy-driven organizations a platform for fact and data-based news, discussion and debate was the vision behind the creation of SavvyRoo. Even with a growing user base over the past year, Blumenthal’s TEDx talk shows that the quest for facts is more important than ever.

In addition to founding SavvyRoo, a website dedicated to empowering people to become savvier consumers of news, Mr. Blumenthal is also the bestselling author of Be the Hero and was named by Leadership Excellence magazine one of the “Top 100 Minds in Personal Development.”

Visit SavvyRoo at  www.savvyroo.com