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The media is not connected to "journalism" or "reporting" anymore, but Mass Communications (required courses), pre-packaged promotional items disguised as news stories--"There's an exciting new diet drug available..."--and learning how to appear well on camera. Most people are aware of this by now, but it never really makes the case until you get real, specific stories like this, about real incidents.
I had two, very minor, brushes with the media, local "news," and was shocked and later angry at the tactic that was used both times. I think it has been standard for some time, among others used. About 12 or 13 years ago there was a homicide in my neighborhood--unheard of for this town--and the police were kind of botching the investigation. It was being blamed on a mentally retarded girl in the family, even though she could not have gotten rid of the weapon and cleaned the crime scene after, as she was not capable of such planning. This became a disturbing thing in the area that people were talking about, etc. One day, my Mom and I were coming back from a shopping trip, pulling up to the driveway to pull into the garage, and all of a sudden, an unmarked white van comes roaring out of nowhere, I looked up thinking we were going to get hit, and these two males jumped out, ane with a microphone that didn't appear to be connected to anything and didn't have a battery, and another with a camera. Before I could register what was going on, (and this is on my own property and no, I am not a celeb), this grinning total stranger with the microphone was asking us slanted questions about whether or not the mother of the retarded child should be prosecuted for negligence. Since no one in the neighborhood believed that that was the way it happened, and still shocked from the suddenness of this ambush, we partly answered the question, (it is hard to describe how flabbergasted you are to be accosted the way they do, as a tactic--your mind is blank for a while), and partly tried to explain the sense of disturbance at the police sloppiness. Whenever we tried to tell what the actual problems were with the case--even sounds some people heard that night--the microphone was pulled away and the camera stopped taping. We got more slanted, unanswerable questions, not the way it happened that night, because this "reporter" wanted to hear that the mother supposedly should be prosecuted, and would not tape if we did not say that. We never did, because it was not the concern. As we tried to explain that the problem was that the police were not paying attention to problems with the evidence, the one with the camera sudenly shut it off, lowered it to carry it, and went back to the van, while we were still answering the question! If you do not advance their script, you are cut out. It is not news, as events are really known out here.
The second example was a neighborhood squabble that this one station decided to exploit for one night on its "news"cast. There was a knock at the door, I went to answer it, and the camera was rolling, with lights, and a microphone shoved in my face with an instant question I had no time to prepare for. At least this time, having been abused by these people before, I shut the door. The tactic of forcing you offguard, to answer something you could not prepare for, nervously, as they stand there cooly; with no time to think, is standard, and was used as described by the Houston Democrat, by way of having their (corporate) speakers ready and prepared, calm, ahead of time, and the non-corporate one cannot study things, and rushes in still anxious. When they stun you this way, you also don't have your wits about you so that you can tell them to reword it, go to hell, or anything else. You can't defend yourself.
It taught me, once and for all, that "news" "reporters" do not give you a moment to collect your thoughts, then ask open-ended questions so we can all pursue the truth. They slant it to push whatever their already worked-up story line is, and if you don't "cooperate," you do not appear. They don't care what the real story is.
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