I guess I don’t mean where do they find them, more like WTF are they thinking?
There was just a story on our local news, a young man in a standoff with police was shot and killed.
They did the usual ask the weepy friends and relatives gig. How do you feel about your loved one being shot to death? Well duh…
Yes, he was a troubled young man and yes, he was a drunk but he loved his young son soooo much.
But the topper of all the toppers in all this absurdity?
They go back to our intrepid reporter and her sign off goes something like this " It is now up to the medical examiners office to determine just how he died"
I think the bullet holes are a good place to start that investigation.
I guess it sounds better than “It is now up to the medical examiner’s office to determine what drugs he was on when he died.” but why anyone would care is beyond me. Would such an obvious case even get an autopsy? Why? I thought autopsies are only done if foul play is suspected.
Darn, Derleth, you need to watch more coroner shows.
The autopsy can help determine things like whether the guy received a single shot or half a dozen. In many jurisdictions, the behaviour of the cops involved in the gunfight needs to get checked (to determine whether they used undue force); knowing whose gun fired the lethal shots and whether they were instantly lethal or a fast ambulance could have saved the guy is one of the many pieces of data used in the investigation.
I find myself laughing when I turn on the FOX network news, the usual inane reporter babble, but with a twist:
-their mania for “on-location”-they send some idiot to stand in front of a courthouse (at 6 AM), talking about the guy whose due to be charged-sometime around 10 AM! What the heck is that supposed to prove?
-the traffic “coverage”-OK, we have a breakdown on I-95 -BFD! Reported grips microphone, shouting into it: “we have a 10 MILE BACKUP!” -well, whoop de do-ya coulda fooled me!
-the usual nightly parade of gore-car accidents and fires.
FOX nes stinks!
In defense of TV reporters, it’s not easy when you have an evolving story and approximately two minutes to gather facts and organize them into some sort of coherent structure, let alone getting something written. If the pretty blonde reporter says something obvious or stupid, it’s not necessarily a reflection of her intelligence. It may just be that she’s under heavy pressure to get something on the air. There’s time to do it better at the next newscast, but this isn’t the next newscast.
Believe me, some of the smartest news people I know are TV reporters and anchors.
It must be difficult being brilliant and yet willingly participating in the deliberate, inexorable dumbing down of the rest of society. I’d take my hat off, but I EATED it on ACCIDENT!!! HEE HEE HEE!!!@
And he always seemed like such a quiet fellow, kept to himself…
I wish people would realize that just because someone is sticking a microphone in your face doesn’t mean you have to, you know, say anything. It’s not a gun. They want the good sexy footage and will most likely edit out you boringly walking on by (unless, of course, you’re the criminal and not the witness, in which case they’ll want to show that you refused to answer questions.)
My understanding is that all “untimely deaths”, i.e., young people who are not normally supposed to die, get autopsied, for the reasons mentioned by you, and others. They can tell if the guy ingested a drug, if something physically went afoul in his brain, etc.
VIZ magazine used to parody the newspaper version of this. There would be a news story involving a tree - say somebody got hanged there or something. And there’d be a photo with a caption: A similar tree, yesterday.
TV news reporters. For years, you’ve watched them; you’ve trusted them. But now, some experts are asking the question: Where do they find TV news reporters? * The answer may shock you. Are your children safe? Find out in our 5-part special report, starting tonight at 9.*
The innurmeracy and scientific ignorance of many reporters always "saddens and shocks me. I am not talking pHd level understanding, but simple things. I am constantly seeing reporters trip over basic stuff, like pronouncing $101, 397, 425 as ten million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and twenty five dollars.
A discussion of the mars polar explorer “… with the succesful landing of the polar explorer, we now know more about the universe and even the galaxy!” While technically correct, again off by many orders of magnitude.
Describing how night vision goggles work - “By amplifying all the infrared light until the human eye can sense it…” Wow, amplified infrared, so strong I can see it… got any visine… how about a new set of corneas… mine are well done…
How digital music works “Cd’s have digital codes on them which allow the computer to find the music in their memory and play it back” (What? just huh!?"
I have the (mis)fortune several times to witness or being part of an incident where local TV news reporters covered it. On a couple of these occasions the reporters signed off with “Fred Bloggs, Eyewitness News, outside the Whatchamacallit Building,” when in fact, they were at an entirely different location.
Of course, the background is so bland the public would never know if they were in the studio standing in front of the green screen.
The last time it happened, I fired off an email to the reporter and called him out on his physical location lie. I said if you lie about where you are when reporting a story, what else are you lying about in the story itself? I cc’ed that email to his news director and station manager. And since it was a big story, I also cc’ed it to the other reporters covering the story from the other TV stations, as well as their news directors and station managers.
As you might know, this weekend Minneapolis marked the anniversary of the I-35 bridge collapse, and the local news did the customary saturation programming of the memorial service, etc. After the 3rd or 4th showing of the security camera footage of the bridge collapse, the anchor-chickie enthusiastically mentioned that construction workers can now walk all the way across the replacement bridge, then chirped “And no traffic has crossed the river there since the bridge collapse one year ago!” Good grief.
My favorite TV news moment came when some nut went into the University of MN president’s office and shot a gun at the ceiling, and KSTP provided us with a running LIVE! shot of the bullet hole throughout the lunchtime broadcast.
I always cringe when an area gets a new talking head who encounters, for the first time, a local place that only an outsider would say incorrectly. For example, in Baltimore County, there’s Towson: first syllable rhymes with cow - n00bs invariably call it “Toe-son.” I guess you really can’t blame the news-reader, but one would think that the locals could have a cheat sheet of stuff that everyone knows but an outsider wouldn’t.
I’m less forgiving of those who can’t pronounce regular English words. I can’t think of any off the top of my head at the moment, but when it happens, I always yell at my radio/TV. Ted Baxter lives…
