WGCL showed some enterprise and got a nice scoop earlier this month when Adam Murphy produced a story on metro Atlanta’s only toll road, Georgia 400. The story basically said this: Although tolls are producing many times the revenue needed to pay the road’s 18 year old construction bonds, the state intends to continue to [...]
Archive for March, 2009
28 Mar
Don Mac
Don McClellan’s piece on WSB about the ING Marathon wasn’t particularly memorable, except for the fact that the ageless McClellan actually showed up to do it. McClellan retired from WSB as a full-time reporter many years ago. But he still turns up periodically on the air, typically covering low-impact stories. His bio describes him as [...]
24 Mar
Expense report
WSB has a strong and peculiar history of attacking the spending of colleges. It plays into the hands of demagogue politicians who find seemingly-absurd instances of government-funded scientific research (“volcano monitoring,” say), then decry the waste of money. Justin Farmer tapped into that journalistic / audience-pandering lineage with a report on March 5. Farmer documented [...]
23 Mar
Transparency
This was cute. From St. Patrick’s Day: more about “Transparency“, posted with vodpod
20 Mar
Low-hanging fruit
Some investigation. WSB goes to a state web site listing delinquent taxpayers. WSB cherry-picks a few names. It sends John Bachman to a few addresses. Bachman and a camera-rolling photog demand to know why the taxpayer is delinquent. The taxpayer stammers on camera. The Revenue commissioner clucks on-camera that these folks ought to know better. [...]
19 Mar
Shading the truth
In 2003, Gwinnett County prosecutors tried to send a 16 year old boy to prison for life for killing a child he was babysitting. The trial got lots of media attention. Prosecutors claimed the victim died from Shaken Baby Syndrome. But defense attorneys had a different story: The baby had died from a brain hemorrhage [...]
18 Mar
Not so tough, part two
By Race Bannon Today’s tv news follows predictable algebra: stories need to be an easy to get quick turn, and have a low litigation risk. Hustlers, hookers and dirty preachers are busted yet again, but purveyors of true lawlessness and high crimes at the executive level…WALK. Broadcasters want their news operations to be viewed as [...]
17 Mar
Not so tough, part one
By Race Bannon On Monday a News Director walks with an internet technology employee to her car. We think she may be paid as much as $80 day. The News Director is walking her to her car because he has just terminated her. He has promised to offer her the job back after the economy [...]
12 Mar
Line of the day
Maybe it’s the line of the year, written by a WXIA staffer teasing last night’s 11 o’clock newscast: A NAKED KNOCKER…IS GIVING SOME METRO WOMEN…QUITE A SCARE…. ONE VICTIM SHARES HER STORY… The line teases a straightforward Kevin Rowson story about a flasher in northeast Atlanta. Rowson had the good sense to simply use that [...]
10 Mar
By the numbers
“Lawmakers” is a news program that airs on Georgia Public Broadcasting while the legislature is in session. We are among the legions of TV viewers who rarely watch this newscast, but we made an exception Monday. “Lawmakers” is a dry and curiously stubborn mix of inside baseball and quaint old-school television, rooted squarely in the [...]
Recent Comments