Are Rhetorical Questions in the Media Getting Out of Hand?

It seems more and more, these days, that the media is using rhetorical questions to grab the public's attention, but are they really effective? Do they actually keep the public captivated for longer than they would be normally? Can the technique be over used? Is there such a thing as too many rhetorical questions? Are there consequences for using an inordinate number of them? Can too many rhetorical questions annoy the audience to the point that the audience stops caring entirely? Does the media really need an audience that has such a short attention span? Can an audience be called an audience if the medium that they are enjoying happens to be in print? Can this be called enjoyment? Are all of these even rhetorical questions? Or are some of them just a form of mock dialog? Can research be done ahead of time by the author in order to keep him from embarrassing himself? Can the words "wasting everyone's time" be added to that last sentence? Why does the author even write things like that when they clearly hurt his feelings? Is that a tear in his eye? Is the little baby gonna cry? If he said it was just a speck of dirt under his eyelid, would anyone believe him? How about, if he said it was an allergy? Is he allergic to suckiness? If so, would that explain everything?

To answer these questions, we called upon Dr. Earnest Whorrell at the International Language Institute In Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"To start off with, yes. Rhetorical questions do tend to keep an audience more attentive." Whorrell claimed.

But can he really be trusted?