Sometimes I wonder why they even give press conferences. They should instead give statements, say what they’re allowed to say, then walk away. Why waste anyone’s time with, “Sorry, I can’t answer that,” “Sorry, that’s classified,” “Sorry, I will not reveal that information at this time.”
I saw a lot of this at the press conference the Utah police gave right after Elizabeth Smart was found. Since all they could say was she’s found, she’s alive, and she’s back with her parents, why go into the whole duck and weave with reporters?
Here in Topeka, back when some local soldiers were returning home from Desert Storm, a local reporter stuck a microphone into the personal space of a married couple that had just gone into a big clinch “Do you have any plans for this evening?”
In either the 1992 or 1994 winter olympics, a reporter here in Canada (Rod Black) asked a player from the Canadian team, right after they’d just lost the gold medal game about his father. You see, he’d recently died and the player had promised that he’d win the gold for him. The reporters wording was something like, “You promised your father you’d win the gold. Do you feel like you’ve let him down?”
The player who I don’t think was more than 20, immediately started welling up and Black looked horrified when he realized what he’d just said. He pretty much ended up being ‘banished’ to covering figure skating after that.
I’m in TV News, and I’m often appalled by the shoddy quality that leaks across the border. But I recently discovered that most US stations have about 1/4 the number of employees that work in my newsroom, and that reporters average 1.8 packages per day :eek:
Where I work we’ve often got 10+ reporters working on any given day, and at least two of them will be on research days.
The doctors who operated on Mickey Mantle for a new liver were holding a press conference. Naturally it was covered by a few sports reporters, one of whom asked the Doctor if the donor would get a chance to meet Mickey.
My all-time-favorite involved not a local but a national reporter. It occurred many years ago during an evening news special on one of the big networks. I can’t recite it verbatim now, but I sure remember the significant part.
Highly acclaimed news reporter Barbara Walters was interviewing long-time news anchor Walter Cronkite shortly after his retirement from broadcast news. It was a long interview that lasted at least 30 minutes so they covered a lot of ground about his career and personal life.
Toward the end of the interview Barbara asked Mr. Cronkite, that since he was so well known, highly respected, and well versed in current events and world politics would he ever consider running for president of the United States; he answered No, and went on to explain that he felt he probably couldn’t get elected by the people once his political views became known because they were so controversial.
At this point, the natural follow-up question to ask would be, “What exactly ARE your views that would be considered so controversial?” I know it was the question I was dying to have answered. But instead, our illustrious journalist looked at Mr. Cronkite and asked (no, I’m not joking), “Imagine with me for a moment, If you were a tree, what type of tree would you be?”
Hunh!?!?! I was so stunned by the lack of the question I wanted to hear and the insertion of an absolutely idiotic question, that I didn’t even catch his response. To this day I don’t know what kind of tree he would be or, more importantly, what his controversial views of politics might have been.
Another one here in KC. Last night we had a thunderstorm. Your run of the mill, late evening thunderstorm, complete with lightning and thunder, if you can believe that.
Well, of course we had our regularly scheduled program interrupted by the weather team, which isn’t such a bad thing, but they went waaaay overboard when they brought in the reporters who were sitting in their cars phoning in things like: “It’s raining so hard you can’t even see in front of you. Several drivers have pulled off to the side of the road until it blows over.”
People…it’s a fricking rain storm, it’s not news! We can all hear the thunder and rain, we don’t need reporters explaining to us what a rainstorm is like!! I don’t mind the weather guys showing the radar, but the reporters have got to go.
I wonder if they got overtime pay for reporting on a thunderstorm…?
I noticed the news in CA is particularly insipid. I put up with it until one day one of the top stories was about an elementary school in Pennsylvania that was raising a brood of ducklings.
:blink:
:blink:
I turned off the news and haven’t watched the local news since.
Okay. I thought ChockFull might have been anticipating Dickman and Throbbin’, or some other title I didn’t know. But yeah, it wasn’t specific titles he was known for!
Our local news is so inane that I can’t think of any specific examples–there are just too many. One station recently ran an undercover expose on prostitution in a local park. Their title? “Sex, Slides and Videotape”.
I was watching Fox News the morning after the Grammys. A reporter was giving the rundown of the award winners. He stated, “John Mayer won Best Male Performance”. The Fox anchor chimed in with, “Is it true he’s only 16?”
Without hesitating, the reporter shot back with, “Why yes, he IS only 16 and is one of the youngest recepients of the Grammy Award in the whole show’s history…he has managed to balance both schoolwork and his musical career…blah, blah, blah…” and rambled on for a minute about how young John Mayer is.
Trouble is, John Mayer is in his mid-twenties.
The Fox reporter not only got his age blatantly wrong but he continued to babble on about it, apparently making up stuff as he went along! :eek:
