Rip-offs

A story on one of my local news channels raised my journalistic ire the other day.

The reporter asked a question to the viewers in MOS interviews. (MOS= Man on the Street.)

Should Astronaut Mark Kelly the husband to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fly into space on the next and last mission of the Space Shuttle?” The last part of the question was left unasked, “ leaving his recuperating wife behind?”

Once again, in my continuing ascertainment of current television news, I mocked the screen saying, “It’s none of anybody’s business.”

To me this kind of report and reporting is not news. It is not even gossip. It is a poor attempt to get the audience, the viewer, to stay tuned for the next fifteen-minute news segment.

FYI: local ratings in the New York Market are recorded in fifteen-minute segments.

The object of this kind of story is to hold the audience, always presuming you have one, for the next rating segment and thus accumulatively sustaining or increasing your overall rating for the news broadcast when Nielsen adds it up at the end of the sweeps.

February is an important local ratings month so stations do almost anything to win the time period. To me, putting in sensational or controversial sweep stories to get a higher rating is not much different than the NYC union members working inflated overtime before they retire to get a higher pension. Both are unethical and wrong.