[relictele]

Its lazy and its incredibly prejudicial and they know it.

Agreed. We may be threadjacking here but there and there are so many targets but I can't resist a few:

- Reporters standing in front of a hospital where a celebrity and/or a crash victim has been taken. Are they waiting to be invited up to the treatment room?

- Interviews with mothers of thugs who claim "he was always a good boy....never got in trouble."

- Extreme close-ups of lightbars on police & EMT vehicles. Blink blink, rotate rotate, gee whiz that's neato.

- Going to the 'newsroom' (actually just a cubicle farm with no walls) for an important update....when the studio set and the 'newsroom' are 25 feet apart down a hallway! Do the anchors ever get to relate important stories? After all there are two of them getting paid to sit around, read a TelePrompTer and finish each other's sentences!

[bpjam]

I have (in a past life) produced segments for television and the b-roll, or background footage, is essential for news because the audience will die of boredom just watching two people sit at a desk with a still picture over their shoulder. And the whole, reporter on the scene, thing give the impression that the news people are really out there and on top of it.

Local news is one thing but cable news is a whole different problem. Cable news rarely ever has anybody at the place where the story is occurring. There is virtually no 'live' reporting anywhere so you just get hours and hours of stock background footage over and over and over again. (Think video of Michael Jackson walking into court in his pajamas or video of the Duke lacrosse team in uniform stretching and playing catch). Its mind-numbing. They need to get more creative and/or stop replaying the same stories over and over again. The only thing worse is when they stand in front of a backdrop and lie to you about being somewhere or the other (its a meaningless lie but they do it anyways).