Day 1.

Haven't posted in a while. So I have miscellaneous ideas stored up, but instead, I'll post this:

I had the thought of beginnng a daily diary (that's redundant) reporting what is on the local news every night and noting my reactions. I doubt this will actually happen, but let's pretend for one night:

Today, there were a couple of things that struck me. The first is that the show had a lot of name calling. There was a report about some youths being apprehended by police, suspects in some grafitti vandalism.

This was a follow-up report after a broadcast that mentioned the grafitti itself and speculated that it was not gang related, but the work of gangster wannabes. This struck me as a lot of mind-reading. I generally find it objectionable when reporters say things like "the White House believes" rather than "the White House argues." You can't possibly know what they really believe. If you believe they do not lie, then the viewer can take the report of what was argued and reach their own conclusion what was believed. But to reach that conclusion for the viewer overreports. It goes beyond what the available data supports. It means that if the argument turns out to be spin (does that ever happen), the original report will have been wrong. Why report what you don't really know?

So today the culprits were found -- maybe, I'd have to go back and check what language the report used, maybe "suspects" is better than "culprits" -- and, like last time, the report referred to them as "punks." What does that mean? Do they identify with "punk" subculture, listen to punk music, call themselves punks? Obviously, nothing like this was known at the time of the original report. I mean, conceivably, the grafitti might have included actual punk slogans or symbols, but I did not recognize any. I assume that the report was calling them punks as a term of derision, meaning bad youths. This is, I think, borderline hate speech, "punk" used this way being to young people what "bitch" is to women. It is also, to the extent that punk has a potential factual meaning, a misleading epithet which some might see as identifying these bad acts with punk subculture. And in general, I don't see the point of namecalling in a factual report. How can one be objective and fair while calling someone names? I don't think this kind of expression of personal opinion has a proper place even when the crime is murder. Why heap abuse on kids for petty offenses before they are charged or tried? There could be any number of things to be said in favor of these kids to mitigate the offense. Or aggravate the offense. We don't know any of it. How is that fair?

There was another report tonight that involved a report of some people who gave a 2-year-old marijuana. The online transcript does not include Mike Jacobs' bumpers to the report, referring to the people who did this as "rocket scientists." I assume this is again not to be taken literally but as a petty insult. This is Mike showing how he's one of us by expressing the same opinions we would have. Standing up for conventional opinion, pandering, padding the facts with vapid commentary.

I just read the report again online. Some quotes and comments:

(1) "Exclusive: shocking and sad video." The local news equivalent of a laugh track, so you never have to make your own judgments.

(2) "A toddler caught on tape smoking pot with his mother in the same room." Can I get a verb, please? What is with the style that omits verbs? Grammar is a good way to assure that whatever you say asserts something that has a meaning and a truth value.

(3) "The mother is from Menomonee Falls. She was punished along with two of her friends." Does "from" mean that she is somewhere else now? Japan? Mongolia? Punished when? How? (Let's check ahead... Well, "They were all smoking marijuana inside a Menomonee Falls home..." and "TODAY’S TMJ4’s Heather Shannon showed the tape to several Menomonee Falls moms," so it looks like she was still there when this happened. At almost very end of the report: "Weber's attorney says his client has maintained complete sobriety since her arrest last fall. 'She is gainfully employed and has been doing everything in her power to better her life and the life of her son.' Children's Hospital did run tests on the little boy and they found that he did not have any marijuana in his system." So it looks like the arrest was six months ago, give or take. The punishment might have been five months ago or yesterday. So much for the five Ws. She is apparently not in prison. We're left to guess whether she got probation, for how long, under what terms. We don't know about the friends.

(4) "The cell phone video shows a 2-year-old boy taking a marijuana blunt and smoking. The video shows his mother's friends teaching him how to do it." Was it a blunt? I didn't see the video but I am not confident. Teaching a two year old? How? Telling? Demonstrating? I doubt this too. Just doesn't sound like an easy thing to do.

(5) "Everyone had the same reaction. 'That poor little baby,' one mom said.' Oh, that is disgusting,' another mom said. [Another is] appalled at what she saw. 'Instead of a child, he's a form of entertainment, and that is just awful,'... [Another said,]. 'I am in shock. I just cannot imagine doing something like that with your child and videotaping it and making a joke of it,' Holmes said. Are those all the same reaction? Pity, disgust, shock? I was trained that you never characterize ("appalled") before the quote: let the quote speak for itself. And the woman who said she could not imagine: well, first of all, I hear about stuff like this all the time. But more importantly, the woman is also wrong in how she characterizes the video: the mom was not reported as being the one doing it, she was in the room, and can be heard commenting. Why include a quote that reacts to facts contradicting those reported?

(6) "were all charged with giving the marijuana to the boy." Again, they always say "charged with" followed by the substance of the accusation rather than the name of the alleged offense. That is a big problem. If a report says, "he was charged with killing his housekeeper," is it negligent homicide, first degree murder, manslaughter, party to a suicide? Is the fact that the victim was a housekeeper relevant to the offense as an enhancer?

Next story: free breast implants. The teaser talks about doctors being outraged, bit the item struck me as spun in exactly the opposite way, as a horrible, big ad for women to seek free breast implants by, hinted but not stated, offering sex. I need to check this again tomorrow when there is a transcript online and not just a teaser. At the end of the report, Carole Meekins makes a comment about the sad lack of self esteem among girls. Well, I might agree with that, but why I didn't really feel that perspective came through that well in the report, with any facts. It seemed like a wierdly schizophrenic report, slanted in one direction, but with a commentary at the end completely contradicting that spin, unsupported by any facts. Plus it basically charged the woman in the story with acting irrationally out of self-hatred, which she would probably resent. More mind-reading. And no chance to respond. Maybe I'm wrong. I;ll check.

Finally, I remember that yesterday John Mercure had a report that was actually interesting: they put a boy in a lobby of a heavily trafficked city building surrounded of posters of him, in the identical coat, calling him missing. Almost no one noticed. The only problem is that I can remember maybe a few months or a year ago they ran an almost identical report. So this was really lazy and not new. Does that justify fake posters? Why keep running the same "unscientific experiment" and reporting all the unreliable results on who tends to notice more? Why not just do it once, right? And then find something different to do that will move us forward.