Here’s something that will make you wonder about the misery of life and the horrible things that some of us journalists have to contend with in order to grab your attention.
In short it involves Fox presenter Shepard Smith who was simply doing what them folk at Fox pay him to do, that is present diabolical news and trash it to the best of his ability whilst at the same time preserving a shred of integrity about himself as a reporter and that of the network itself. Of course all that worked out pretty miserably as you are about to find out when you watch the video below. Yes I would advise a barf bag cause this shit is fairly nasty and in no shape and form designed for kids.
The moral of the lesson? Next time your friendly network features a felon on the run (Jodon F Romero) and your friendly network helicopter is chasing him with the joy of a maniacally inclined douche it might be preferable to have a delayed monitor in place so when the cops and robbers finally duke it out in the desert we can all be spared all that nasty shit that makes us gooey and icky inside. Yes it all looks like fun until someone gets killed. Or maybe just maybe it might be wiser not to show such stuff in the first place given the real trauma it may incite and the fact maybe car chases serves no real news value except for the reality it’s like sometimes watching a fuck fest waiting to see who of course gets fucked the most.
Isn’t it time you aimed for a career as a tabloid junk journalist too?
Then of course there was this interesting comment from a me too back seat journalist on the web that had me ruefully smiling:
Big friggin’ deal. They unintentionally aired a live suicide. For those that are blaming the network/show/host/producer/etc., get over yourselves. Nobody forced you to sit there and watch the damn chase. Too many of you are blaming the network for airing sensationalistic content, but it’s every where we look. If viewers would start turning off the crappy reporting we are getting from ALL of the networks, maybe they would get back to reporting real news.
Concerning these types of incidents, grow up, this stuff happens every day in the world whether you are aware of it or not. If your delicate senses can’t handle reality, maybe you need to step away from all of your electronic media devices and read a good book.
As well as this very thoughtful reflection from gawker:
Of course, viewers love car chases. They’re exciting. So networks show them. They get ratings. And the reason they get ratings is that they contain, always, the potential for mayhem. Mayhem is excitement. A car crash, a foot chase, a police tasering—all are a strong possibility, right before our eyes. So we watch, and the networks knows this, so the networks give us what we want. This is the supply and demand dynamic that drives cable news broadcasting.
But we don’t want too much mayhem. We don’t want to witness a suicide live on television in the middle of the day. This is the ethical problem: a car chase contains a high potential for mayhem,without any inherent news value otherwise. It is simply mayhem porn. And it will always be impossible to predict when something awful and wretched and bloody will happen in one of these situations. And therefore, by running these things on live TV, a news network is running the risk that something like this will happen. The only solution is not to run car chases on live TV, despite the public appetite for them. It’s a case in which the risk for disaster outweighs any real journalistic value. (There is none).
No, they absolutely should not. I never got the appeal of them.. big deal.. a car chase. Unless its law enforcement chasing down an assassin or terrorist, who cares?
another jackass we dont have to support in prison…..thank you Darwin for your theory