"Gig Giacona" wrote in message
...

THough I am ashamed to admit it I was once a reporter for a lo-cal TV
station. Our news director made it very clear one day after a young
reporter-ette used the term "War Zone" to describe the aftermath of a
tornado that if anyone used it again there had better be some pictures of
tanks and soldiers to go along with the story.

Slow fade to latter that very same day. There was one of those little
inserts the networks feed to the locals to insert in the 5 o'clock news
about upcoming stories the network will have that night. A network
reporter
was describing the aftermath of some battle somewhere and acctually said,
"...It looks like a war zone here..." The news director who was also the
local anchor could not even begin to stop laughing before he was back on
the
air.


That's a good story. I still shake my head when they dispatch some schmuck
to stand on the shoulder of an overpass and broadcast live what it was like
7 hours ago when there was a fatal car wreck "not far from where I'm
standing." Or the ever present real or fake stand up shot outside City Hall
so they can tell us they are considering this or that. God forbid we learn
of these considerations from a reporter in a studio, how can we trust them
if they aren't standing in front of the building where this future decision
will be announced?

I'm as big a news junkie as ever there was, but I've discovered that I can
learn more by watching less. Despite the incessant complaining that they
only have 22 minutes to broadcats news, they seem to fill 8 minutes of it
with the latest bogus "medical research" discovered by some grad student
that eating Twinkies doubles your chances of contracting dropsey or
interviewing the receptionist for the drive-in wedding chapel where Brittney
Spear's hairstylist got htiched.


--

Scott

Like the archers of Agincourt, John O'Neill and the 254 Swiftboat Veterans
took down their own haughty Frenchman. - Ann Coulter