Category: Serious Stuff

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Serious Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Dead air

This is not what you sign up for when you get your first or second job after landing your journalism degree, or learn how to run a camera or a live truck. This is not what you sign up for at all.

Roanoke, VA television reporter Alison Parker and photog Adam Ward, both of them in their 20s, were gunned down during a morning news live shot. The video is all over Youtube; just look up “WDBJ shooting” and you’ll find numerous copies of it. I watched it once and really don’t want to see it again.

Perhaps even more heartbreaking is the photo of the two in happier times. Keep in mind, I put in my 20+ years in broadcast quite a while back, enough that it now seems like it was another life. And I’m in Arkansas. I never met these people. But I can tell you that I look at this and see the faces of everyone I ever worked with. Young, determined, eager to make good on the unspoken (and, if you watch only national network news, unfulfilled) social contract between the fourth estate and the rest of society – to go out and get the story.

There aren’t words to describe how upsetting it is if I even momentarily transpose those two faces with any of the reporters or photogs I ever worked with. It’s like a punch in the gut. Word that the shooter has been identified as a disgruntled former employee of the station doesn’t make it any easier, and doesn’t make it make any more sense. I could think of numerous faces in that category as well. But none of them who did anything like this.

The broadcast business, at the local level, is difficult enough as it is. You’re already underpaid and overworked. You’re already thrust into a social media spotlight by station management that wants you to engage with the public to enhance their brand. (It used to be that you’d get total strangers talking to you at the grocery store when you’re really just trying to get your ramen noodles and go the hell home after putting in the latest in a solid string of 14-hour days. Now there’s internet-assisted stalking.)

If you’re a photog, you’re now not just a photog, you’re an engineer too – you have to know how to set up the entire live truck, a task for which, only a few years ago, a station engineer used to accompany you into the field; the station management doesn’t want to have to pay that engineer to stick around past five now, so it’s just you. And while you’re doing your live shot, minding your camera and hoping no one messed with the truck, you have to keep an eye out for oh-so-clever souls who are sure they’re the first ones to get behind your talent during a live shot and yell “f___ her right in the p____!”, because that’s so original and so clever.

None of that is in the same league as what happened in Virginia this morning. Reporters and photogs aren’t armed. There’s a reason for that; if you’re asked questions by someone with a camera, it’s journalism at best and perhaps a bit annoying at worst. If you’re asked questions by someone with a gun on their hip, it’s an interrogation. In a worst case scenario, the photog is responsible to some degree for that talent’s safety; in the old days, it was sort of an unspoken thing that the battery pack at the back of the camera, with the full weight of the camera behind it, is probably a more effective bludgeon than a rifle butt. That wouldn’t have worked here, however.

Both station employees were shot dead, and their on-camera guest, a member of the local chamber of commerce, was taken in for emergency surgery.

If this just seems like a weird, one-off incident, it isn’t. Ask my former co-worker Patrick Crawford, a Texas meteorologist who was shot as he walked from the station building to his car one morning. Patrick can tell you it’s not an isolated incident. He’s a solid pro and, honestly, from the time I spent working with him, about as inoffensive a person as you’re likely to meet. (Patrick worked with us at 40/29. I hope he’ll forgive me for dragging his name into this, but his ordeal came instantly to mind.)

And you can ask me. Nearly 20 years ago, at the first TV station I ever worked at, I was one of two people asked to stay on the premises as management fired a particularly volatile employee. They weren’t sure what he would do or how he would respond, given that he had walked out of the building earlier that day, slamming doors and yelling racial epithets about one of our reporters, all because she dared to take “his” truck (which…um…had the station logo on the doors, so I’m pretty sure it was the station’s truck) to go shoot a package. Aside from the station owner and the station manager, every one else was told to go home early…except for myself, and a guy named Danny in master control. Danny was an older gentleman, a great guy who – and I think everyone knew this – had a hip flask of something on his person at all times. (Hey, you try working an afternoon board shift heavy with strip syndicated reruns of Full House and see what it does to you.)

I was tempted to go take a swig of whatever Danny had on him that day before retreating to the production room (which happened to be right by the back door fire escape, considered a likely escape route in a worst case scenario), locking the door, and waiting, phone off the hook and in hand. A little bit of courage, liquid or otherwise, would’ve been welcome. (Spoiler alert: nothing happened, the employee in question left the premises uneventfully when he was dismissed, and filed groundless lawsuits later. On the downside, we were still showing a lot of Full House.)

And that was in the late ’90s, before the modern age of the internet whipping would-be-Unabomber tinfoil-hat shut-ins into a frenzy about “the [liberal/conservative/lizard illuminati overlord] media establishment” snowing everyone over.

Broadcasting is enough of a pressure cooker, for so many of the wrong reasons. Never enough time, never enough money, consultants from out of town insisting that every stinking story has to be a live shot (couldn’t the lady from the chamber of commerce be asked to come to the studio for a more controlled on-set interview?), tight-fisted management forcing increasing reliance on not-ready-for-prime-time wireless streaming tech, internet stalkers…

…all of that is bad enough without someone shooting at you and trying to kill you.

These people were not sent to cover hostilities in a war zone (generally speaking, there isn’t a representative of the local chamber of commerce in combat reporting). They shouldn’t be dead now. Whatever beef their former co-worker had with either of them, this wasn’t the way to settle it.

Stay safe, friends who are still in the biz. For those who aspire…there’s now one – no, two – more reasons to reconsider. The industry is not now what it once was. You used to aspire to Murrow and Cronkite; now it’s TMZ.

And now there’s this.

Edit: I also strongly advise you to read this blog post, which probably explains, far better than I do, how your co-workers in the news biz become your family, and why this is such a raw wound for those of us who have been in that business. EG… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Serious Stuff

That amazing kid and his amazing school

“Today we learned about protons and electrons!” my oldest son told me a couple of days ago when I picked him up from school. It brought me up short just a little bit.

Not because I thought it was something he shouldn’t be learning about – it’s absolutely something he should learn about – but I was thinking back to how old I was when I learned about protons and electrons in school. One thing I do know is that I wasn’t in the first grade.

And that’s kind of the magical thing about where my son goes to school. … Read more

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Serious Stuff

Hypotheticritical

Old Fart FishSo, let’s say there’s a hypothetical city whose hypothetical residents are convinced by a small but loud minority, who want Nothing To Change, Ever, to spend decades voting against improvements and upgrades to infrastructure, even necessary things like sanitation and sewage. Instead of incrementally and relatively painlessly introducing these things (and their costs) as needed, they vote for Nothing To Change, Ever.

Until the outside world steps in and says, no, actually, it’s not okay to have punched the pause button at 1974; these things are not optional amenities, modern life sort of demands them. So now you’ll pay for them all at once. Naturally, this is passed on to the residents, who have to foot the bill. “Boo!” scream the voters who wanted Nothing To Change, Ever. “It’s not fair that we should have to pay for the city’s mistake!”

When actually… yes, yes it is fair. Because by voting for Nothing To Change, Ever, they are actually the ones who made the mistake – they directed the city to make the mistake – and they should pay for it. Sadly, quite a few people who had spent years voting in vain for forward motion have to pay for it too… but they were the ones willing to pay for it all along, back when it would’ve cost less instead of slamming somewhat painfully into everyone’s head like an enormous haddock, inexplicably traveling through the air at approximately 40 miles per hour in precisely the way that haddocks are not known to travel. It’s just not a naturally tenable position for them. Then again, sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and hoping for Nothing To Change, Ever, is also not a naturally tenable position.

Hypothetically speaking, of course. Any resemblance to actual cities where I may have actually grown up are purely coincidental.… Read more

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Serious Stuff

Vote the following representatives out of office, please.

The following local members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against a proposed amendment (the Amash Amendment) to the Defense Authorization Bill. The Amash Amendment would have defunded the NSA’s warrantless-wiretap domestic spying program. Please join me in ushering these people out the door in the next election and replace them with someone who understands civil liberties.

Arkansas

  • Steve Womack
  • Rick Crawford
  • Tom Cotton

Oklahoma

  • Frank Lucas
  • Tom Cole
  • James Lankford

According to this article,

The White House called the amendment a “blunt approach” that is not “the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.” Naturally, the irony of that specific complaint resonates: The intelligence programs in question were not enacted with any of those forms of debate. To ask that their rescinding be held to a higher standard then their enaction is hubris of a real sort.

Underlining how seriously those who are in favor of maintaining the phone record collection program took the amendment’s threat to yank its funding, General Alexander himself — the good general heads the NSA — gave briefings on the Hill to House Democrats and Republicans, albeit in different sessions.

IF you want to know which heads need to roll in your state, there is a record of the votes here. See if your state’s representatives are in the “nay” section. The names in the “nay” section are people who no longer need to be in a position to make law.

Vote while you still can, folks. This whole Big Brother setup is some seriously f@#$ed-up business.… Read more

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Serious Stuff

A belated Memorial Day thought

Just a thought… way too late for Memorial Day, but then I spent the weekend running a megamutt lost–and-found, otherwise I would’ve jotted down much earlier the following thought that’s been coalescing into existence inside the misshapen potato I carry around atop my shoulders:

My dad and all of his brothers were in one branch of the service or another. He was a Marine; one of my uncles was in the Navy; another uncle – the one who everyone has, since I was a little kid obsessed with anything NASA was doing, assured me would’ve been the most in-tune with me of any of them – was killed in action long before I was born. Like so many others, their generation of this family made sacrifices I can barely imagine; thanks to them and everyone who’s ever put on the uniform and served, all I have to do is imagine it.

So I propose this: let us not squander the blood and sweat and deferred dreams of those who have made these sacrifices by failing to fully participate in the freedom they swore to protect. To fall in line behind pundits who are misrepresenting or manufacturing “facts” is to make a mockery of that sacrifice.

So you’ve heard something outrageous on the news that gets your blood boiling? Do the research. Delve deeper. Perhaps even – gasp! – see what the opposing side is saying about the same issue. It may not be what you think.

To be led by someone just because they can get their face on TV, their voice on the radio, or because they can put a web site on the internet, is to waste one sacrifice that should never be wasted.

And remember that government begins at a local level. There’s more to it than what’s going on in Washington. Most of what actually affects you, such as sales tax rates and other taxes, is determined locally. Ignoring this to focus on Washington is like planning to fly to the moon without having quite worked out that whole getting-away-from-Earth business.

In summary: we have freedoms. Countless people have died to preserve them. We owe these people more than thanks.

We owe it to them to make best use of what they died to protect instead of being led around on an ideological leash.

Just a thought. Everyone has a range of views all over the place. Talking things out reasonably without resorting to base emotional “scare” arguments is what has made this country great in the past – and can make it great again. Know more about the issues affecting you than a couple of carefully cherry-picked, out-of-context soundbites. Act on knowledge, rather than fear stoked by someone whose agenda isn’t much more comprehensive than “talk smack about these other guys, without pissing off my advertisers.”

The folks on TV and the radio aren’t running for office, and they’re not running the country, no matter how much they think they should be. Our elected representatives are not answerable to a media entity. They are answerable to us – the voters who put them in office in the first place.

Think. Reason. Debate without resorting to lowest common denominators. Do the research and put the pundits out of work.

Think for yourself please.… Read more

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Funny Stuff Serious Stuff

Timeless wisdom

Capitol thinking“We would like to apologise for the way in which politicians are represented in this programme. It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed political time-servers who are concerned more with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than the problems of government, nor to suggest at any point that they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the well-being of the people they supposedly represent, nor to imply at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of concern for the vital social problems of today. Nor indeed do we intend that viewers should consider them crabby ulcerous little self seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might find offensive.

We are sorry if this impression has come across.” … Read more