It's Not News to Me

A couple of years ago a woman I knew was murdered by her husband. I hadn’t seen her in quite a while, but at the time of our acquaintance, I liked her very much. I was hoping that the local news reporting would give some hint to his motivation for this horrendous crime when the case came to trial. Instead the reporting was terrible.

The trial was covered by at least two large regional newspapers and one or two local television stations. As I read each report, I realized that the stories were identical. It was as if they were written by one person and the same story sold to each outlet. I didn’t realize that the local media used free-lance writers or stringers and that they all would employ the same person and use the same story.

Tuesday’s story covered only the opening arguments of the prosecution and the defense. There was no indication of the theory of the crime of the defense. I don’t know if he claimed self-defense or if the attorney was trying to mitigate the circumstances claiming the death was a result of manslaughter or a lesser degree of murder or if he was trying the old blame-the-victim defense. In fact, I don’t know if the husband was charged with first degree murder or a lesser charge. The only testimony reported was by the police officers who responded to the wife’s call to
911. I am left wondering why he did it. I have only the rumors that were reported when the murdered happened.

This afternoon the headline read that the defendant had been found guilty, but I don’t know if he was found guilty of first degree murder or a lesser charge. It could have been manslaughter, I suppose, even though she was shot in the back in front of their 8 year old son. There was no mention of sentencing. Instead the first sentence in each of the stories was that the husband had been found guilty; the rest of the story was simply a word-for-word re-hash of yesterday’s reporting.

While I have no real experience in journalism, I do know that if I had turned in such poorly written material for my high school newspaper, the journalism teacher would have failed me and I would have been removed as co-editor. In that class in a little Kentucky school, I learned at least to write a factual report--who, what, when, and where in the first paragraph and to flesh out the story with a few details.

As I read the local news or listen to the local nightly news, I am appalled by the bad grammar and even worse writing. Not only is the reporting lacking, but the editing seems to be non-existent. It’s not only the media in smaller markets. I read the Houston Chronicle and the Louisville Courier Journal regularly. They aren’t much better.

Is it any wonder that newspapers are failing? The really frightening thing is that in the very near future we could be left with only the internet and television news. I just can’t see myself trusting anything that the Headline News channel’s silly, giggly anchors report. I stopped watching HLN when I saw several of the anchors stuffing saltines into their mouths and reporting on the results.