As I was watching Lost tonight, I couldn’t help but notice the news tease for the special report on ABC25’s 10PM newscast tonight. The story is about the possibility of teenage sex offenders roaming the halls of the schools. It looks to fit all the criteria of modern broadcast journalism teases:

1. Ominous music
2. The phrase “sex offender”
3. Asking how the story will affect the viewers’ children

There is another ad they played towards the end of the episode that started with the phrase “Kids molesting kids.”

I really can’t imagine Edward R. Murrow promoting a sensationalistic story like this in his newscast. If someone thinks this this is actually legitimate journalism, I’d love to hear the argument. I personally just see it as fear mongering as a method of getting ratings.

Jeff Lyons’s rough Tuesday made the NBC Nightly News last night. I found the clip online and uploaded it to YouTube.

Thanks to the tip from Diane in the comments of the previous post.

While I was sitting at home yesterday trying to recover from this nasty flu bug going around town, I was watching a lot of Daytime TV. For about two hours of my day I watched Regis’ return from his bypass surgery followed by The View. During both of these shows there were several spots run previewing a story on the ABC25 news at 5 about lock bumping. For the uninformed, lock bumping is when a criminal has a special key made that he can just jam into a lock to open it. It should be noted that there have been absolutely no lock bumping cases reported in the tri-state area. Let’s see how many are reported in the next few months.

There’s nothing wrong with reporting on this type of story. My problem was with the teasers that ABC25 kept putting on the air with the ominous music and fear mongering dialog. In my opinion, the spots were preying on the fear of the viewer: if you don’t tune into our news, you might be a victim. What’s worse, there have been no reports of bumping in town, but the teases didn’t offer that up. They played out as if it was something that was happening frequently in the area.

This isn’t just a local thing. It has been happening with local news outlets all over the country. Opie & Anthony have a recurring bit on their morning radio show that highlights some of the worst of these news teases. Previous show favorites include teases that warn viewers that frequent hiccups could be a sign of cancer, how a law could _shut down religion, or city officials wanting to pack all it’s sex offenders into a single city block (it could be in your neighborhood!). If I had a VCR, I would have recorded this clip and sent it in. This is fear mongering at its greatest.

Am I the only one that is frustrated with what mainstream news has become in the past 10 years?

photo courtesy of dewitt