Re: Altering live TV pictures

["Douglas J. Broda" <djbroda@mindspring.com>]

At 12:59 AM 1/15/00 -0500, A. Joseph Ross wrote:

>The right or wrong of this technique was discussed. The comments seemed to 
>be that doing it in a sports event is one thing, but altering the scene of 
>a news event is quite another.

One the one thing, news *is* different from sports, and altering the news
scene is and should be a no-no.

On the other hand, the "alteration" here didn't exactly alter the scene's
character to a huge degree, and Times Square on New Year's isn't exactly a
hard news story.

IOW, it was wrong (and looks petty on CBS' part), but it's hardly one of
the great journalistic gaffes of the television age. It doesn't even
approach the altered O.J. Simpson cover on Time, with which this has
actually been compared more than once.

Douglas J. Broda
Broda and Burnett
Attorneys at Law
80 Ferry Street, Troy, NY 12180 USA
(518) 272-0580
djbroda@mindspring.com