Some of the criticism you read here each Monday is a bit on the "picky" side...things that only a journalist would likely notice or care about. That doesn't mean they aren't important, just that they're not the kind of on-air or in-print event likely to catch a non-journalist's eye.
On the other hand, I spotted a "story" on local TV recently that would probably prompt comment even the casual viewer. The top dog at the station's corporate owner had been given an award by a broadcasting association...and the station included the "story" on that night's newscast. A question: if it had been the Top Dog at a competing station, would the story have ever seen the light of day? Of course not. And of course there was nobody asking the boss-man critical questions about the broadcasting industry...like that average of only 17 seconds an hour of "public service" time stations offer...almost half of it after midnight.
And whatever happened to the promise broadcasters made to provide free over-the-air High-Definition TV if we taxpayers would just let broadcaster's have the new digital frequencies free? (Instead, many stations have chopped the frequency into multiples, allowing them to offer their own network-linked weather or movie channels.
It's not easy for a producer or news director to stand up to an attempt to insert self-serving corporate crap in a newscast, to tell 'em to use some of the station's promotion time for it. But that failure to stand up for what is right has contributed to the continuing drop in the credibility of TV News.
(The Monday Morning Media Memo is a weekly feature on this blog.)
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