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What They Teach You In News Reporting School

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  • What They Teach You In News Reporting School

    DB and I are having a great exchange of emails about it, in vastly different time zones. I'm up in the middle of the night enjoying two days of not working, he's looking at bedtime, I've gotta post this...I must I must.

    The local TV news. So many years ago.....The first time I got sent on a work traveling work assignment, it was to southwest Michigan. I was so used to watching the TV news broadcast out of Charlotte, it would be almost thrilling to see the broadcast from Chicago. BIG city coverage. Let's see how THEY do it!

    Well, there they were, the Chicago anchors. Danged if they didn't look the same as the Charlotte folks. Clones. Uncanny. Makeup and overdone hair, some teasers and then lots of commercials, and there will be more at eleven O'clock. Yeah, more of the same.

    So DB sends me a video grab from Portland TV station KGW. An update on the lost plane. And there's the guy at the desk with makeup who switches over to the guy standing in front of the Portland airport with gooped hair and makeup. What better place to stand in front of before you switch over to a network-prepared video about the plane situation?

    I mean......they must teach you that stuff in TV news reporting school. You have to stand in front of something to seem like you are an authority. Yep, the local airport is a good place to stand in front of before you switch to the video that conveys the real content about a plane lost in Asia.

    "That's a wrap. Pack up all of this stuff. Good job guys. Where are we gonna eat? After we get some gas for the satellite truck..."
    Last edited by pdub; March 16, 2014, 01:39 AM.
    Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

  • #2
    News hour = slightly different version of drama-ridden reality tv = yawn. I want boring old Walter Cronkite back with just the facts and no bias.
    Of all the paths you take in life - make sure a few of them are dirt.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by STINEY View Post
      News hour = slightly different version of drama-ridden reality tv = yawn. I want boring old Walter Cronkite back with just the facts and no bias.
      BBC and Telemundo seem able to pull that off still. I would like to learn Spanish sometimes, they don't appear to pull any punches on their world news. Ours seems so "Filtered" as to what Proctor and Gamble or Kimberly-Clark wants us to see.
      Flying south, with a flock of bird dogs.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by STINEY View Post
        News hour = slightly different version of drama-ridden reality tv = yawn. I want boring old Walter Cronkite back with just the facts and no bias.
        Amen!
        Ed, Mary, & 'Earl'
        HRPT LongHaulers, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.


        Inside every old person is a young person wondering, "what the hell happened?"

        The man at the top of the mountain didn't fall there. -Vince Lombardi

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        • #5
          Originally posted by STINEY View Post
          News hour = slightly different version of drama-ridden reality tv = yawn. I want boring old Walter Cronkite back with just the facts and no bias.
          x3
          Escaped on a technicality.

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          • #6
            It's a business, guys. If the station across town is getting the ratings w/ live shots in front of airports or styled-up anchors, then that's the new template. Ratings mean people are watching...if people are not watching then there's no point in being on the air...so in reality, it's you and me and the family across the street that determine what of all the things going on in the world make it as "news" and how they are presented, like it or not.

            I remember watching Cronkite when I was a kid, Grandma loved him, a towering always-credible guy. All seemed to follow his lead as to how to believe about things. News seemed to be less about entertainment when even major markets had only a half-dozen channels (three networks and a couple independents) to choose from.
            ...

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            • #7
              Just about anything on TV is crap these days. Reality TV that isn't close to reality, entertainment news that's isn't news at all, and national or world news that's presented to us with slant towards the direction of whatever big business was the major contributor this year. Just have to watch it and be smart enough to pick out the facts, draw your own conclusion as to what's really going on. But yeah, I get Peewee's point. Drives me nuts they fly people around the world so they can stand in a setting that seems pertinent and talk for 20 seconds then cut to a video they could have put together with stock footage at the newsroom.

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              • #8
                I would settle for reporting facts instead guesses, rumors, conjecture, and especially celebrity gossip. Some one should oultlaw the socalled expert talking heads as well.
                BS'er formally known as Rebeldryver

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                • #9
                  I would settle for reporting facts instead guesses, rumors, conjecture, and especially celebrity gossip. Some one should oultlaw the socalled expert talking heads as well.
                  They no longer teach the 5 W's in journalism school (who, what, why, when, and where - plus how). They teach how to suppress, twist, obfuscate, and omit the facts - while substituting propaganda, opinion, and smear tactics in place of news.

                  This is why Sharyl Attkisson recently quit CBS. They wanted her to do the latter, while she wanted to do the former.
                  Act your age, not your shoe size. - Prince

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                  • #10
                    Like newspaper... You would never ever find bad grammar, spelling or misuse of words... A suburb of Salem OR is a town called KEIZER, ok? In one news report online the writer misspelled it 3 times in ONE SENTENCE! ...another thing that agravates me is the interchange of "there", "their" and words like those.. They may sound alike but mean way different things... I haven't really red a newspaper lately... So do they make those kinds of mistakes?

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                    • #11
                      I stopped watching TV news a while back. In the past local news covered almost exclusively local stories. Network news only covered national stories. Now local news mostly re-hashes what the networks cover. Network news is littered with trivialities the pick from what little actual reporting the local stations do. And both repeat, repeat, repeat without adding anything in the way of update or further investigation.
                      My hobby is needing a hobby.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Deaf Bob View Post
                        Like newspaper... You would never ever find bad grammar, spelling or misuse of words... A suburb of Salem OR is a town called KEIZER, ok? In one news report online the writer misspelled it 3 times in ONE SENTENCE! ...another thing that agravates me is the interchange of "there", "their" and words like those.. They may sound alike but mean way different things... I haven't really red a newspaper lately... So do they make those kinds of mistakes?
                        Ain't that the gospel truth. I can remember when I was a wee little kid, I was working on some homework and I asked my mom how to spell a particular word I wanted to use. She said, "Go find it in the newspaper." The newspaper in the 60's was a reference for "proper." Wow, what a difference now, even in the dying typeset media and more so online - whatta mess. "There," as in, "Somebody stole there car," and folks sure do type "alot" a whole lot.

                        And this is all feeling mighty familiar. I'm all but sure I've started this thread before, nearly sure of it, probably more than once. Sorry, guys. It's a peeve of mine, and y'all knew that already. Shut up, peewee.
                        Last edited by pdub; March 16, 2014, 10:45 AM.
                        Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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                        • #13

                          2 Characters.

                          Escaped on a technicality.

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                          • #14
                            Hey! I type "alot", alot...........
                            Ed, Mary, & 'Earl'
                            HRPT LongHaulers, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.


                            Inside every old person is a young person wondering, "what the hell happened?"

                            The man at the top of the mountain didn't fall there. -Vince Lombardi

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by studemax View Post

                              They no longer teach the 5 W's in journalism school (who, what, why, when, and where - plus how). They teach how to suppress, twist, obfuscate, and omit the facts - while substituting propaganda, opinion, and smear tactics in place of news.

                              This is why Sharyl Attkisson recently quit CBS. They wanted her to do the latter, while she wanted to do the former.
                              The one other thing that bothers me is the news agencies embellishing numbers, especially numbers of deaths and missing just so their channel's version of the story sounds more interesting than the other guys'. For an example, the tsunami that hit Sumatra and Fox news was reporting "up to" 250,000 dead before the water had receded.
                              BS'er formally known as Rebeldryver

                              Resident Instigator

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