Re: Glitches and Brainlessness

[Dib9 <Dib9@aol.com>]

Much of the problem with poor news coverage is management putting "reporters"
in positions that they should not be in.  The Portland TV stations do a
horrible job covering state government because, for the most part, they do not
assign a reporter to the State House as a beat, they just send whoever is
available to cover a story.  Any State House is a complicated place and if you
do not know the people and the process, you can not do a good job covering it.
This year WCSH had a reporter doing a live shot at 6 before the Governor's
State of the State address and a loud bell went off.  The reporter, not
knowing that the bell was a bell that goes off any time there is a Roll Call
vote, said "There must be a fire drill."  She obviously had never been at the
State House when the Legislature was in session, but there she was doing a
live stand up covering the State House.

As a political junkie and someone who has been involved in the process for
years, I get much more upset by factual errors and simple misreporting of how
the process works than I do about mispronunciations.  In my time in radio, I
have certainly screwed up more than my share of pronunciations, sometimes even
when I know the correct pronunciation.  

Dan Billings
Bowdoinham, Maine

------------------------------

End of boston-radio-interest-digest V2 #64
******************************************