A glimpse into the process by which young reporters are indoctinated from the lowest levels in the food chain to conform to formulaic "if it bleeds, it leads" news coverage. The problem is, when you're at the bottom of the food chain, you tend get bottom of the food chain assignments. There's not a lot of blood to be found in dry, boring government press releases. Solution? Reach for the ketchup.
Case in point - this evening on the CTV local news (Saskatoon affiliate), reporter Shannon Spring began her segment by revisiting two particularly tragic multi-fatality crashes that occured in the province in 2004. The first involved a carload of pre-driving age teens, the second a horrific crash in which 6 died, caused by a multiple-offender drunk driver with a revoked license.
What was the story?
Transport Canada had announced a 24% decrease in highway fatalities in Saskatchewan over the past 5 years, attributing the improvement to a road safety program and increased police surveillance of rural highways. We also learned that Britain leads all countries in terms of lowest highway fatalities, while Canada is fifth, and that more emphasis is needed on preventing car-pedestrian fatalities....
Of course, just holding up a pamphlet and talking about that is pretty mundane stuff. What's a reporter to do?
The story needs a "hook", something to make it more palatable to an audience .... what better than a little hemoglobin on the plate? So, off to the film archives, dig up some corpses, arrange the wrecks to create a pleasing backdrop and voila! Your Transport Canada release is taking on life!
To hell with agony revisited by friends and family who may be watching, and to hell with the dignity of those who lost their lives - the scenes now reduced to a few images to be employed in lieu of your own creativity. Its all part of the hard "reality" of professional journalism.
Nice work. Shannon Spring. You'll go far.
I think I may have driven by the six person crash last summer on my way to Red Deer from Yorkton. It was a mini-van and a truck in the middle of the prarie. It was real bad. Shame on her.
Is the real problem that the news agencies are selling this stuff or that the public is buying it?
Semi-OT, but how about that Eason Jordan of CNN and his wild claims that a) the U.S. military deliberately targeted and killed a dozen reporters, and b) the U.S. military tortured reporters.
The best round-up is at Captain's Quarters
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
"Transport Canada had announced a 24% decrease in highway fatalities in Saskatchewan over the past 5 years, attributing the improvement to a road safety program and increased police surveillance of rural highways."
Of course the government is going to conclude that the government is responsible for fewer fatalities. To credit the drivers themselves for driving better, or the carmakers for making safer cars, or the snowplow contractors for maintaining better roads, would be to deny the need for the existence of huge and expensive bureaucracies and police forces. And if the observation is correct that there are a lot fewer traffic accidents in times of economic recession (there being less of a financial motivation to speed), then the only credit the government could take, is to admit that despite all their economic meddling (actually because of it), the economy is in a shambles.
Call me an old duffer who took many Gordie Howe elbows to the jaw, but what was the point of including these two vignettes of tragedy? The juxtaposition is mindlesss, and only a child cannot see that there are exceptions to most trending statistics.