I just can't stop

Okay, tonight, it's an update on deadbeat dads, and a report on the roads where one is supposedly most likely to encounter a drunk driver. I just want to make a few notes about the latter. It did something that I noticed last night too. The reports are incredibly self-referential. "We tracked him down." "It took a lot of effort." "We searched for three weeks." Who cares? This stuff serves two apparent functions. First, it sensationalizes the story by creating a phony drama and suspense over whether the investigation will be successful. This is Geraldo outside Capone's vault. It's entertainment and it follows the strictures of entertainment. Nothing the I-Team does is newsworthy. They make the story about themselves to inject entertainment value into stories that would otherwise be simply news. Second, it's a big advertisement for the station -- look at us! Look see how hard we worked. This took a lot of effort. Be impressed. Now that I think about it, there's a third function: distract from the story so you won't see how deeply flawed it is.

Speaking of which, okay. The newsguys tallied reports of traffic arrests and noted the drunk driving arrest hotspots. Here's the big surprise -- the busiest major highways tended to be the source of the most arrests. One thing the report didn't ask anyone was, "Mr. Expert, is our methodology sound?" I'd have asked that before doing all that work. I suspect the answer would be, no.

Sections of the city that are more dense with roads are correspondingly likely to have more traffic and hence more arrests. Highways with higher speed limits and no stoplights simply see more traffic, even though the highways tend to be better lit, better maintained, and easier to drive (no intersections, constant speeds) than city streets. Some areas may have more arrests simply because they are better patrolled. Areas near police stations are likely to be more patrolled. One high arrest area is close to a part of the city that has late night traffic jams due to large public events -- unsafe, or just better patrolled?

A better methodology would be to compare number of accidents with city engineers' estimates of traffic flow. If a high ratio of cars on the road are involved in accidents, this is a sign of unsafety, rather than, "we counted more drunk driving arrests within a mile radius of the huge highway interchange near downtown than in any other circle with an area of pi miles." Duh!

Another thing which I neglected to mention last night is that within the report, they keep throwing in teasers: "you'll see" this, or "we'll show you" that, or "just wait until you see what we found." Just tell us, dammit. Don't make a 45-second report into a 3-minute report by telling us three times that you're going to show us something before you do. If you don't have a full report, then it isn't soup yet. Stick it back on the burner until it's ready.

More Stupidity from WTMJ

It's one thing after another. Tonight, the worst of the worst, John Mercure, left, had an expose on two "deadbeat dads." This is a recycled theme that they run every once in a while, it seems, because it's dear to their hearts, and, after all, they don't have many original ideas. Again, please note, I don't mean to defend categorically real deadbeat dads, but so bad is the reporting from Channel 4, that when Mercure or one of his imitators accuse someone, I instantly begin to doubt. If they accused O.J. Simpson of being black, I'd start to wonder if he weren't really Chinese or something.

So this time, two guys. One -- and I admit this was clever -- they got to brag about all their successful enterprises in real estate, making tons of money. They confronted him and he denied everything. Later, they presented testimony that he was a big liar. So, if he's a liar, doesn't that undercut his claims of being such a bigshot, with all this money? It sounded all pretty vague to me. If there really was a big pot of money this guy had, couldn't Johnnie find it? Has he ever heard of research -- go down to the Register of Deeds, or just check on the City's website. If he had no evidence to support his claims other than the braggery of a known liar, it's premature to report. Adding his opinion that the guy is "deplorable" does nothing to change that. John's opinion is not news. In fact, it's utterly predictable.

Go to guy number two. This guy was depicted as a gambling addict who probably burns through every cent he earns and is left with nothing. This makes him a deadbeat? Yes, but the guy should have his wages garnished and get some treatment. It doesn't sound like he's concealing any big money from his kids. It doesn't sound like he's laughing his way to the bank. More to the point, John left in the segment a telling retort from this guy, something like, "shit, man, I just explained that to you!" This has happened before. We never seem to get this side of the story. If the guy's story is preposterous, let us hear it. If it's reasonable, let us hear it. If it's checkable, check it. Don't just hide it from us.

Beyond all this, the report is just disgustingly manipulative and one-sided. Once again, Johnny has confused law enforcement for journalism: "We're tracking them down, and authorities could soon be locking them up." Note to John: quit your job and enroll in the police academy. Our culture can withstand one more bad cop better than it can withstand one more hack reporter taking up our precious airwaves.

Last night, the expose was on Arturo Jimenez. Read and listen here. Here I have the usual complaints and some new ones. Among the usual, interview technique. Here are the questions News 4's "I-Team" cleverly asked Jimenez to gain his trust and elicit his version of the story: "You have taken people's money and not done the work," we said to him. All he could say was no. "No, no.""Talk to me about it," we tried again. "I'm going to give you a chance. You have taken people's money and not done the work.""I have nothing to talk about," he said.... "Why are you ripping people off in your own community?" we asked him. See how the interviewer slyly elicits the most informative comments from Jimenez by shouting accusations at him and simply rejecting anything he answers? It takes years of journalism school to master that. I smell another award!

Among the more special, I liked the I-Team's suggestion that because Jimenez was dishonest, he should not work at all but maybe just steal outright, or sponge off friends or the state:
"Courts have ruled against Jimenez. The Better Business Bureau has complaints on file. Yet, he keeps working..."

Mostly, though, I noticed how they focused not on the allegation that Jimenez was a crook, or that his victims were Hispanic, but that he was Hispanic, and this is what made him a louse. One talking head said he was someone who "takes advantage of their heritage." (Lazy minorities have all the breaks. How unfair that white people can never manage to prey on nonwhites.) Another guy said he made all Latinos look bad to Anglos. Some truth to this, but only because 1) Channel 4 is there to make sure all the white people know about this guy who previously had a bad name mainly among his own, and 2) people make racist generalizations, but Channel 4 never says they shouldn't -- it puts the entire blame for their racism on Jimenez. How ironic. Channel 4 is doing just what they accuse Jimenez of -- purveying a stereotype of Hispanics as lazy and corrupt.

Another report, this one not an I-Team report, but a "Special Investigation." The supposed problem, long lines at the DMV. It starts with an anecdote from some guy who waited two hours. I was at the DMV recently and waited about 20 minutes. Not great; I wish they'd hire more people. Still, it leads me to doubt that 2 hours is typical. The report had no average wait times, it just reported how long the lines were, and again just with anecdotes, not real data: 77 at one place. So what? Is that 77 waiting with one person on duty and each person has 15 minutes worth of business? (That would be a 19-hour wait for the last person in line, which is essentially like having an appointment for the next day.) Or maybe there are 12 checkout aisles, they take care of you in three minutes, which comes out to a 19-minute wait.

After inventing or exaggerating a big problem (which I say because they reported that customers at the DMV had an 80% satisfaction rate -- painting this as a horrible, horrible thing), they turn to the solution... privatization!

Privatization is not a solution. It does not magically make things better. Anything private businesses can do, governments can do just as well, except for screw over workers and rip people off, and they're getting pretty good at those things too. The only plus for privatization is that it can lead to a greater nimbleness and incentive to implement solutions. But once those solutions are identified, government can copy them. So, if Ohio went private and it was a huge success, I would want to know how that private company does things so much better. What did they do? Hire more people? Invest in technology?Allow people to make appointments? Allow more tasks to be done online? Cut corners on accuracy or security? Correct some unique Ohio problem that Wisconsin corrected 20 years ago? Take advantage of some unique Ohio characteristic we don't have? It would make a sound piece of reporting to find out these things and then ask whether they would work here.

That was not done. There was a reference to one possible solution to some problems -- allow customers to take care of some of their business online. Sounds like a great idea. A FAQ could answer your questions. You could download the forms and submit them, rather than waiting in line to hand them in. The computer could check for missing blanks. Even things that required you to be there, like having your picture taken, or take a vision test, could be shortened -- set up everything in advance and make an appointment. This would take most of the people out of the line, making it shorter for everyone else. Also mentioned, better technology. Stop walking back to the row of filing cabinets for a record, get it from the computer in a second. That should speed things up. In all likelihood, this is what Ohio did.

However, the reporter dismissed this with a wave of the hand: "Their solution is more online services and better technology. But that's little comfort for people losing hours of their lives at the DMV." No? Why not? Listen, Mike Trevey, if you don't understand it, ask a question. Don't seek to impose your own ignorance on viewers.

The best part of the report came after it was over. Carole Meekins asks, so, is there any downside? Oh, yeah, Mike neglected to mention that in Ohio privatization worked, but elsewhere it's been an abysmal failure. Thanks, Carole, for shooting that suggestion entirely to hell with one question the answer to which Mr. "Special Assignment" decided he shouldn't bother to tell us.

Before I go back to last week, let me also mention the repeated reports on "fainting goats" and where you can get them. Why are they running and re-running livestock advertisements disguised as news? Do they get a cut from every goat sold?

Now back to the I-Team. Their commercials talk about how when you investigate, you get to take on the powerful. Usually, it’s people who park illegally. They just did another one of those. Or you get divorced dads with gambling convictions, or Hispanic contractors who don't perform. So last week it’s…student loan deadbeats!

Now, don’t get me wrong. As usual, the story is half true. There are folks out there who have the money and should be doing a better job of servicing their student loans. Many were improvident in having borrowed. A very few may be scammers. But as usual, many of not most of the “powerful” whom the station seeks to afflict are themselves victims.

The station goes to great lengths to tell us over and over that when student borrowers default, the taxpayers wind up paying.

But who’s really responsible? Here are some things the broadcast doesn’t tell you:

1) Some schools are frauds, designed to suck up student loan money, without actually preparing their students with the marketable skills needed to pay back their loans. These schools can sometimes be spotted by the fact that most of their students default on their loans.

2) Even legitimate schools consciously overcharge because they know the government, by subsidizing loans and grants, will take up the slack. The formula is need-based, which means the higher the tuition, the more students need, and hence the more they get – which they immediately give to the schools. Hence tuition has overall grown at several times the rate of inflation.

3) The banks make money off making these loans, charging both interest and extra charges like administration and origination fees, despite the fact that they bear zero risk on the investment. (Remember, when students default, the government insures the loans, so the banks never pay, the taxpayers do.)

4) Student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. So there are graduates out there who can’t keep ahead of the interest, and can’t start over.

The story focused on doctors. Student loans for medical school can be enormous. If you don't finish, you'll just have this huge debt and no profession to show for it that can help you pay that off. The interest on that mountain of debt can by itself overwhelm any income that you can get from half a medical degree, which is to say minimum wage.

So what does TV-4 propose? Throw them in jail? That'll save the taxpayers a lot of money. (Actually, it may discourage people from going to medical school. But that would also hurt medical schools and cause a shortage of doctors, which is already a problem.)

Thanks, WTMJ. With you on the air, at least we'll never face a shortage in stupidity.