What Did They Say?

Once again the television media has shown that the only concern on local news programing is the youthful look of the station. It seems that they only hire young people who look good on camera and do not consider the way they do the stories that they are reporting.
I know that they are hiring college graduates. The truth is that they are hiring those with broadcasting degrees that seem to have neglected the outside world, while they were getting this degree. When you see some of the reporting, you can understand the shortfall in their education. If all they know is how to hold a microphone and maybe how to edit a tape, then you can see that they have lived a sheltered life.
When a reporter does not know the difference between a power pole and a light standard then you wonder. This reporter was pointing at the light, that was on top of a broken cement light standard and said that it was one of the power poles that were damaged by the wind. Now I know that most of us will call it a power pole when in most cases it is actually a utility pole since it carries electric power lines, telephone cable and cable for TV. I give them that error since it might be difficult to tell the difference if the pole has fallen, especially at night.

Even the more prominent will make an occasional error. I do not think that any person should be expected to be perfect all of the time. On the morning news today the weather person gave the temperature in “Ohio” instead of “Ojai” a city in Ventura County. A couple of weeks ago the weather map on the 11 PM News had two San Francisco’s shown above Los Angeles. For some reason they had replaced San Luis Obispo which is half way between the two cities with San Francisco and so it looked like they were trying to move the two big cities closer together. Were they predicting what an earth quake would do? It was OK once, but it persisted for the entire newscast.
My problem is that they hire the field reporters who seem to:

1. Specialists in broadcasting and who do not seem to have acquired a generalist knowledge of the world around them. Yes, I know some in the broadcast industry who do bring knowledge of the world and who care about what is going on around them.
2. They have not gained the experience working in the field to be able to listen to the person that they are interviewing so that the questions that they ask make sense. When you ask a person something that person has just said it seems so dumb. If a person says that it will be cold tonight and you ask if that means that it will be cold tonight you are not listening.

3. I know it is hard to talk and listen at the same time and when you have a producer and director talking to you through your ear piece. It is OK to stop and take the ear piece out so that we know that it is not your fault that you do not sound professional.

These things are not earth shattering. They are what makes a professional broadcast. They are what give us the confidence that the person has done the work that is needed to give us the information we need to make the decisions that are important based on what is going on in the news.

When you use pictures that viewers have sent you, there is no need to show pictures of the same thing that your field reporter has just shown us. Use this cheap alternative to expand coverage and not just to make a viewer feel important.

I do not hate TV news reporters who are young. I just think that their education should be more inclusive of the real world. I want to laugh at the stupid things that anchors say to each other and not about the news stories that are reported.