Mingo Sheriff Murdered......Coverage

[genlock]

8 and 3 did their standard good job.
13 chose a strange camera angle for the press conference.
Had coordination problems too. WVVA shared wsaz feed, wymh maybe did too.

[Tim Tyler]

My review of the coverage: WSAZ-Tim Irr does a much better job at the anchor desk and should leave the field reporting to someone else. WCHS- Kallie Cart did a good job. WOWK-They have no bench strength in field reporters. Saw the very young looking Alanna Autler doing a standup. She look out of place.
During my long tenure in Lexington, Kentucky, we had a written plan that if any really serious news was breaking, we would only dispatch our senior reporters to cover the story, especially if we were going live with it. Our thinking always was: “If the world is coming to an end, nobody wants to be told about it from a young, smiling, reporter.”

[Hoss]

I have enjoyed the open discussion of this form and would like to explore this event in the “what has happened to news” light. Let me first say this is a sad event and this discussion is about the procedure of news coverage. I watched channel 3 for the News conference. I was somewhat taken aback when the local authorities started and it seemed to be a Memorial service. No problem with coverage of a News conference or Memorial service but each has a different approach and a news conference is about information that updates the story. The information to advance the story was far into the event. Did the stations get misled into to going LIVE from the start? Did they not have any plan or procedure to break away until the update started? Once committed was it too cumbersome or inappropriate to cut out? I, as a viewer that had no knowledge of this event until I turned on the six o clock news, kept asking “what happened since the sheriff was shot”? With commercials, forward promotion and fluff there is precious little time for information in thirty minutes and we have to rely on the news station to convey that to us in a clear concise manner. Also it troubles me on a “control of content” level as to how easy it was for other than journalists to steer the direction of the story. I hope today questions are being asked about assuring the content of news. I would also appreciate any other comments.

[Mike]

Mingo County has a long and sordid history of sheriffs ending up in prison for corruption.

Looks like they finally got an honest one who got murdered for doing his job. The small counties are the most politically corrupt, even more so than the Regime in DC.

Someone could win a Pulitzer if they investigated Greenup County, KY.

[Mr. Tom Jones]

13 chose a strange camera angle for the press conference.
Had coordination problems too.

Consensus I hear is that 13's management is effing clueless. Sad, because they still have some decent people.

[Mr. Tom Jones]

My review of the coverage: WSAZ-Tim Irr does a much better job at the anchor desk and should leave the field reporting to someone else. WCHS- Kallie Cart did a good job. WOWK-They have no bench strength in field reporters. Saw the very young looking Alanna Autler doing a standup. She look out of place.

WSAZ is good simply because they're living off the past and management has enough experience not to hire "C" players.

WCHS is as good as it is because of a number of WVMH refugees that have taken up residence there, and Sinclair has actual managers in place.

WOWK has issues because they have reporters green as grass, and the pick-up team of management still is trying to find a clue. They seem to have a map. But Bray makes them worry about stupid stuff, rather than things like camera angles.

[cgarison]

I was not lucky enough to get the coverage from the local media as I was stuck at my day job on the outskirts of the birthplace of the US Army, but I did follow the media from the web and I will have to say that I came away just as confused with all the stories here as I am still confused with all the accounts of the Newtown Massacre. First, I have seen stories where Sheriff Crum was killed while eating lunch in his SUV while parked under an under pass while others have said he was killed on the steps of the Mingo County court house like Sid Hatfield. Then I heard all kinds of outlandish stories about the apprehension of the shooter near Delbarton which all have me confused.

So.... Let me just say this. With all of the access that we have to information, could the supposed journalist covering these situations just hold off on clicking the submit buttons on their news blogs and not tweet about stuff until we can get some facts around the situation and try to present the information in a proper news like method. Right now, I am thinking that the shooter was on the hill and fired a magic bullet.... wait. Sorry, that was the Kennedy fiasco. SO I guess all this mucked up media has been going on for longer than I have been alive so I might as well quit while I am ahead.

The short of it is that it was not good with all the strange stories being published on the internet. Typically, the local broadcasters are better than what I saw from this story, but most of the malarkey I saw cam from the AP who was posting stories as if Mingo Co. was in eastern KY. So in the end, I am going to point the finger to at least one source of some of the crap that I saw coming from the developing situation.

[Hoss]

Cgarison is correct about the rush to get the information to the audience as the culprit in misinformation. Consistency Continuity and Clarity, the three C’s always taught as the principals of a well-run News organization have fallen prey to the immediacy and volume of data becoming the determination of the accuracy. We all have seen a rumor gain legs just by enough people repeating it as fact. Much as happened in the Mingo murder with the alleged drug connection. Good old fact checking has taken a back seat in too many instances. I actually worked with an old cigar puffin ND that wanted two verifications on everything and never less than one and it needed to be a trusted source. Yes there was more lead time 25 years ago but the very same speed and ease of communications should make it easier to verify prior to publishing or airing. I agree with Cgarison we need to “present the information in a proper news like method.” It actually is a tough task and I know in my years as a manager I contributed to the slide letting ratings, promoteability and profitability be the driving force.

[cgarison]

It actually is a tough task and I know in my years as a manager I contributed to the slide letting ratings, promoteability and profitability be the driving force.

Quite honestly, news organizations can be more profitable if they are the media outlet with the factual information and not the outlet that is the first with a bunch of stories that need to be retracted or corrected. I am not sure when this became standard practice, but even in 2004 I remember MSNBC publishing articles on their website ahead of CNN and then as the facts emerged they would correct the information without actually adding wording to so the original piece had been changed.

But then again, I set through several meetings today where researchers and professors were presenting to us the concept of "faking data" to protect the privacy of people. I sure as hell don't hope the j-schools in the US get hold of this information as then the 6:00 news will be a total work of fiction with a Dick Wolfe style disclaimer that the stories about to be told are only based on real events.

[the jive talkin one]

I was not lucky enough to get the coverage from the local media as I was stuck at my day job on the outskirts of the birthplace of the US Army, but I did follow the media from the web and I will have to say that I came away just as confused with all the stories here as I am still confused with all the accounts of the Newtown Massacre. First, I have seen stories where Sheriff Crum was killed while eating lunch in his SUV while parked under an under pass while others have said he was killed on the steps of the Mingo County court house like Sid Hatfield. Then I heard all kinds of outlandish stories about the apprehension of the shooter near Delbarton which all have me confused.

So.... Let me just say this. With all of the access that we have to information, could the supposed journalist covering these situations just hold off on clicking the submit buttons on their news blogs and not tweet about stuff until we can get some facts around the situation and try to present the information in a proper news like method. Right now, I am thinking that the shooter was on the hill and fired a magic bullet.... wait. Sorry, that was the Kennedy fiasco. SO I guess all this mucked up media has been going on for longer than I have been alive so I might as well quit while I am ahead.

The short of it is that it was not good with all the strange stories being published on the internet. Typically, the local broadcasters are better than what I saw from this story, but most of the malarkey I saw cam from the AP who was posting stories as if Mingo Co. was in eastern KY. So in the end, I am going to point the finger to at least one source of some of the crap that I saw coming from the developing situation.

Point of clarity: Sid Hatfield was shot on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse, not his own. Still, i found it...interesting...that no media accounts of the Crum shooting that i watched recounted this major piece of West Virginia history!

At this point, it seems more like it might have been a case of Ernest T. Bass shooting Andy rather than an organized crime hit on the sheriff.