I received this email message & attached comments overnight.
“Sent to the KHON news team after one of the most mediocre news broadcasts in a long, long time….Regards, Desmond Yen”
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Desmond Yen
Date: Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:55 AM
Subject: The quality of your newscast has reached new levels of mediocrity
To: news@khon2.com, etc
Cc: info@mediacouncil.org
Dear KHON:
Tonight’s 10:00 pm newscast was a joke. Correct me if I am wrong, but you did not have a single reporter on a news story. Instead you sent out a videographer and had Joe do VOs. That is reporting?
And you led the news with a couple of minor car crashes???? Not a single story on the government (except for the HPD chief story, where you just reported on testimony), not a single enterprise story, not a single story that required a reporter to actually do some research. Your newscast was completely filled with reporting reactive events.Also, was the fire on Maui really news? Or did you report it because you had some video submitted by a member of the public, and thought, oh cool we got some fire video, let’s make a story out of it.
And your story on the Leahey son was completely self serving and self referential. It was as if someone looked around the newsroom and said, “Hey, we need to fill 1:30, can we do a story on one of us?”
I cannot watch your newscast any longer as you seem to have no commitment to actual news. At least KITV still uses reporters.
Joe Moore was right a few years ago….the newscast has become a vehicle for advertising and promotion, and for cute stories about the “keiki,” and not for educating and informing viewers and holding government accountable.
Regards,
Desmond Yen
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Kudos to Desmond Yen. For most of us, we have all but given up.
But that is too easy. We should all care enough about our community to actually take the time to let these folks know that they need to do more than just produce useless nonsense.
Maybe having a wise and intellectual community isn’t impossible. We just need to stop tolerating the stupidity of the status quo.
If they don’t improve, we need to tell them they just shut it all down and we could rely on the internet and go back to radio broadcasts if we want to here a live voice in an emergency.
There will be many non-discriminating viewers so they don’t worry about a few pesky “thinkers.”
This fellow is spot on.
I think sending it to all 3 stations would be applicable.
…welcome to the age of diminishing expectations.
But I love this! :
“You guys SUCK!
Regards,
Desmond Yen.”
hahahaaaa!
yea. We got ourselves a “wise and intellectual community” alright.
Maybe its time for Joe Moore to start picking up the fake phone under his desk and start doing Bob Newhart inspired phone conversations like he’d occassionally do in the old days right before the 10 pm news. At least that would be more newsworthy.
Ouch.
First, I hope you and yours are still above water.
Second, a brief anecdote. Back when elephants had fur, I did a little bit of radio broadcasting. Some years later, I looked around, hoping to supplement my income with weekend work. There was none. The independent stations were bankrupt, the rest had sold out to media conglomerates, and were working skeleton crews, or robots. This was the situation that declining advertising revenues had wrought.
This was twenty years ago. Before craigslist. Hell, before the web.
The only possible honest corporate response to Mr. Yen’s letter is “We are pitching to our audience” (see National Enquirer). “‘Smart’ people don’t buy enough stuff at our say-so to keep us profitable.”
I haven’t watched a television newscast for more than a decade – not even during 9/11. And I don’t aim to start now.
i agree with you, amoeba…
Desmond and friends, I suggest that you just turn it off. Like Amoeba, we haven’t watched network TV at all since 1997, skipped the 9-11 imagery (believe me, you can appreciate the horror just as well by reading about it), and get our fill with reading the world’s papers and keeping track of the weather via NWS. And we read Ian Lind!!
Go ahead…it’s easy..there you go…. Turn it off.
Amoeda is right on the money with the “smart people” line……this comment couldn’t be more true when you watch what has become the morning news #1 broadcast. The KGMB/KHNL show is geared for morons and so you have journalists doing skits and stand up comedy most days. It’s a terrible way to watch the news but evidently they have discovered that’s what we want and what we are. Watching the likes of Howard Dicus trying to be funny is VERY painful…
An afterthought– Letters like Desmond’s could be very effective if sent directly to the station’s sponsors. If it’s all about product just complain to the product-pushers.
“This was twenty years ago. Before the web.”
Uh… I had web sites in 1995. On the web. And email. And chat rooms. That was more than twenty years ago….. “Maybe having a wise and intellectual community isn’t impossible” Maybe I revise my stance… . It is well nigh impossible from the looks of things….
woops. uh. I fergot how to count. 95? yea. less than 20 years. mea culpa. It’s the maitais. Sheesh. sure feels like a few decades.