After watching Hawaii News Now at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, we switched to KITV at 6 to see their view of the world.
At 6:15–barely half way through their 30-minute news–they cut away to one of those throw-away stories used to fill dead air, and doing it cheaply.
This one was video of a dust devil, a small funnel cloud. Maybe worth a mention if it had been in Waipahu, or Waianae, or at least somewhere in Hawaii. But this little dust devil was in Tempe, Arizona. I’m sorry, but I would guess dust devils are a dime a dozen in Arizona. And this one wasn’t particularly impressive anyway. Perhaps worth a mention there in AZ as bit of local color. But national news? That’s nuts. So who in the world decided it was worth devoting a precious minute or two in KITV’s prime time newscast for this non-news??
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Happens all the time. I watch KHON. On weekends KITV has a national reporter for the national news…..usually worthwhile.
Large dust devils are frequent south of there, between Phoenix and Tucson. If they want dust devils, they should see if there’s anybody from Hawaii living down near Eloy, say, to give them live reports.
KITV is an embarrassment for local news media. Let’s face it, Robert K is a sports guy converted to anchor for cost savings reasons……….you really can’t put another spin on that move. Real anchors would see stuff like what you have mentioned and stop it. A lot of real news is happening allover the globe but they rarely find it. Local news?? LOL….just awful.
Don’t blame the anchors or announcers it is the news director or editior who decides what gets on, and the news director is supposed to be monitoring live right there while the news is being reported. I suspect they had some sort of glitch that they needed to fill in quickly, choice could have been better. In my humble opinion, local news media including print, is generally is poor on national and international issues.
It could have been worse. When they haven’t bothered to gather enough real news, or do any enterprise reporting, they resort to social media trending stories (usually animals or babies).
On the weekends, when they don’t want pay for any reporters, they just send out a videographer for the footage and create as VO (voice-over) story. Seriously, when was the last time you saw an actual reporter doing a stand-up story on a weekend?
Thank goodness for Civil Beat.
On a Wednesday. That’s just pathetic.
Maybe they were all busy planning their excursions on the upcoming cruise…
I work at home and keep KITV on for background noise during the day, and that sometimes bleeds into their news. Another thing they do that drives me nuts is frequent typos in the chyron text. Journalism ain’t what it used to be.
Stanford is correct. The ultimate responsibility for what goes out on the air is the News Director. This fluff story happens too often to be an emergency fill. It happens because people don’t care. I’m not going to hammer that person without knowing what went into the decision but generally News Director’s no longer teach. They fiddle with budgets and vacation schedules and fight the sales department’s “suggestions” for a good (client) story.
Considering the number of young, inexperienced (as in low wage) reporters filling the newsrooms these days, that’s a shame. The ND’s job is to guide, motivate, teach and be **responsible** for the final product. This is a sore subject with me as you rarely see a real ND anymore.