DON’T know which is worse: The careless stupidity of TV news, or its downright deviousness.
At least the frequent instances of stupidity are easy to catch – so easy, in fact, that it makes you wonder how such mistakes could ever be made in the first place.
Anybody know the first name of the movie critic whose last name is Ebert?
Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would say “Roger,” but he was identified on-screen as “Robert Ebert” recently on CNN.
CBS President Les Moonves isn’t as wellknown as Roger Ebert, but he’s not exactly anonymous either. Recently, on one of the entertainment news shows, Moonves’ first name was given as “Lester.” His first name happens to be “Leslie” and the airhead who read “Lester” off a TelePrompTer should have known better.
On a recent Sunday night, the local newscasts were so sloppy it was as if the stations were being run by unpaid summer interns.
Graphics visible over the shoulders of various anchors often didn’t match the stories they were talking about. Neither did subsequent footage.
While one over-theshoulder graphic read “Firefighter arrested,” an anchorwoman read a story about a pedophile. The firefighter, who wasn’t a suspected pedophile, was later reported arrested for drunk driving.
Another story’s location was given as “the Edenwald section of the Bronx,” while accompanying footage was identified with the words “BedfordStuyvesant,” which happens to be in Brooklyn.
The same night, a graphic identifying a story about the Rangers hockey team lingered onscreen through the telling of one or two other stories until someone had the good sense to remove it.
Then there’s the deviousness issue, which arises when news programs do stories that covertly promote their own network and fail to provide relevant information when it involves a competing network.
Movie and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer was a timely subject for a profile on “CBS News Sunday Morning” last weekend since his latest movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man’s Chest,” was just then breaking box office records.
The report noted Bruckheimer’s seven series on CBS – three “CSIs,” “Without a Trace,” “Cold Case” and more – and made sure to include ample clips from all of them.
It also said Bruckheimer had three other shows on network TV but didn’t bother mentioning which ones, or who airs them.
Nor were any clips shown.
That would have distracted from the story’s real purpose: Promoting CBS.