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I am home from work today (Monday) because all of the NY/NJ area is under full alert for the Nor'Easter that is coming our way. It's been coming since Saturday but so far we haven't seen much snow. I think there is an inch on the ground and now there is some freezing rain falling to pack it down and form an ice layer. The streets seem to be fine. But just the same all the schools are closed because the weather forecasters say it will get much worse for the commute home.
Because I am home, I have been watching the Santee, CA Santana High School shooting coverage since the beginning. There is nothing more to be said regarding kids killing people. Some will say that there should be more gun control. Others say that it is the fault of the parents, Still others will say that society is to blame. They all are right, of course. But I don't see anything getting solved real soon.
On a different level, what is fascinating to me is the coverage. I think there is marked difference between news coverage in Southern California and the rest of the country. One obvious difference is the high-speed pursuit coverage. From what I understand, aerial coverage of high-speed pursuits is a commonplace occurance in Los Angeles. I have never really seen one. The only one that comes to mind that the rest of the country had a chance to see was the OJ "slow"-speed pursuit. And I didn't even get to see that because I was camping in the Grand Canyon at the time. I don't know if the difference is that we don't HAVE high-speed pursuits in the rest of the country, or that the news media just isn't interested in showing them.
What amazed me today during the Santana shooting coverage was the obvious influence of the field reporters trying to capture sensational quotes. I have never heard such leading questions from professional newspeople before. I realize that it is a competitive business, but show a little heart people. One newsman was interviewing the father of one of the shooter's friends. He was describing that the shooter had mentioned that he wanted to shoot people in school, but when the father confronted him, he passed it off as a joke. The father was saying how guilty he felt for not turning this kid in or stopping him somehow. He said something like he'll "have trouble living with himself if someone is seriously hurt or killed". Without missing a beat, The newsman said, "we do have one confirmed dead. How does that make you feel?" Ugh. That's not news, that's just a sensational sound bite.
The worst case of reporting however was a gentleman who had been repeating himself over and over with every witness that he had interviewed. Finally he turned to one of the obviously shaken mothers who was anxiously waiting for her children to be led out of the school, and said "ma'am, I've been describing this scene for our viewers out here for hours, how would you describe what is going on here?" Whaa? Dude, you're a (supposedly) professional reporter. There are only two reasons for asking that question; either you really are a bad reporter and can't cover a breaking news scene, or you are just trying to capture someone breaking down emotionally on camera. Either way, you're a dick.
I used to think that some of the over-zealous reporters that were portrayed in movies were charactatures (think - the reporter in the first Die Hard movie). But since most of the scripts for movies today are written in Southern California, I'm thinking that maybe these writers have portrayed SoCal news reporters a little more accurately than I thought..
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