First off, AfterElton has a great piece profiling out anchors and reporters. Weathermen are not included (no matter how much the heterosexual Al Roker and the producers of Today try to blur the lines), so no mention of a certain sexier version of Al Roker who does the weather on a certain local New York morning news show.
Speaking of local news...
New Jersey is the middle of wildfires and the reporters are indeed doing their job, but they have caught "human interest" disease. You know that particular affliction that strikes producers and journalists wherein they pester people who are trying to do their job and live their lives by asking them how they feel about a given situation. Just now, I watched a report on WABC where a reporter (I'm not naming names since you never know who is at fault) was nagging the local volunteer firefighters--who are busy trying to save their homes--about how they felt about saving their homes.
What sort of answer was he expecting? "I don't give a toss?"
Did we really learn anything from that story that we didn't know already, Charlie Brown?
Yesterday, a reporter on WNYW asked random passersby about how they felt about a security guard being run over by robbers. Again, this was filler and I would assume anyone with an IQ above 40 would know so as well.
I do not think that this is a situation unique to traditional news, as I see it in all forms. At the risk of bringing on the wrath of the ghost of George Orwell, I would suggest that producers and journalists alike really think hard about giving the opinion of the people on the street.
Unless they assume that the audience is like Charlie from Flowers for Algernon.
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