Slashdot Mirror
Local News Anchor Feels Pain from Afar
In times when Clear Channel makes up "local news" reports from central studios and broadcasts them over radio stations around the country, it's worth asking the question: when does it cross the line into deception?
Clearchannel has been doing this for years. They even have a hand pick^H^H^H^H counted localized top 10 songs lists with the guy's voice from TRL.
They call it "enhanced broadcasting technology." I call it decieving people into spending more money on the artificially "popular" music.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
...it must not be funny for Boston area residents that listen to him every morning. People tend to develop sort of an emotional linkage with their routine, and a news anchor is definitely part of the daily routine for many. I usually listen to music instead of live radio when I commute, but I know I'd be pissed off if it were me listening.
The revolution will not be televised.
The "local" DJs on most small town radio stations are "voice tracking" from bigger cities, but acting like they're broadcasting from downtown.
So I don't think they'd have any problems decieving you where you local television personality is broadcasting from. And I'm not sure it is a problem. I've lived all over, from Youngstown, OH to Boston to Los Angeles, and it doesn't matter where you are, because the local news always sucks.
As a side note, CC has gotten into some trouble with consolidated contests on radio, where they make it seem like your local station is giving away a million dollars, when in reality, it's every station they own giving away the million dollars, so when you call in, you're competing with a whole country worth of callers.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
Weapons of Mass destruction? Nada... Step up the warining level every few months? Sure? Biological Attacks warranting duct tape and plastic sales? Nope... Recent bombings and terrorist attacks other than our own government? Still nothing.. With headlines like these, does it really matter if the newsanchors arent where they say they are? Not like anyone was expecting this "honesty" from them to begin with...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Is the only reason it's posted is because it's about big, evil "megacorps", and gives Michael a reason to injert Clear Channel into this?
Someone explain how this story is relevant to anybody other than Michael and his agenda.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
WBZ's weather reporters never experience our weather either. Gary is the main anchor, he always gets his weather information from an AccuWeather personality, and AccuWeather is centered in PA.
There is another major weather-radio service called Weather Services Corp. That's based out of the Boston area, which like AccuWeather provides weather forcasts delivered by personalties who don't ever actually visit the station's studios, but they never use a national-trademark brand, and they will call their studio anything the station wants them too, such as the "Kiss-FM WeatherDesk".
So, this has actually been going on for decades, it's just that nobody has noticed...
This isn't actually relevant, but it amused me.
On friday cnn.com was running an article about the upcoming Iowa democratic primary. Attatched to this was a photo, labelled as being Dean supporters busing to Iowa from another state, of four or five people standing on a bus and a big guy asleep in one of the seats with a "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt.
Also that day, cnn.com was running an article about how republican supporters were busing into the areas of democratic primaries to hold pro-Bush rallies in an attempt to blunt the effect of the media attention the democratic primaries drew. Attatched to this article was a picture labelled as the pro-Bush supporters busing in. The picture was the exact same one as from the other story, but with the guy in the "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt cropped out.
I found this funny.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.
(588 MB download)
www.illegal-art.org/video/vcd/Spin_1.mpg
Such slips happen all of the time with small-name radio personalities on small market stations. The most common slip-up is when a planned major event gets canceled at the last minute, while the DJ has already locked-in comments about how great the event was. Really messed up when the DJ says how great a concert was when everybody who had tickets knows it didn't happen...
Of course this process can also be intentionally manipulated for comedic effect:
John Cameron Swasey: Laybird, I understand you are a great student of history. Tell me, what were the first words the Indians spoke to the Pilgrims as they landed on our shores.
Ladybird Johnson: Welcome to the LBJ Ranch!
That's one's always been one of my favorites.
Of course in retrospect some of these early comedic manipulations of live interviews can take on a sad irony.
JCS: Bobby, it's rumored that your brother Ted is going to run for president. How do you feel about that?
Bobby Kennedy: Well, if he wants to join me where I'm going, I'd be glad to have him along.
That was pretty funny circa 1965.
I remember sitting in front of a little B&W television all day watching reporters talk about the assasination attempt and the, ultimately futile, attempts to save Mr. Kennedey's life.
There were reporters sitting in the studio talking to reporters outside the hospital where the surgery was taking place. I always knew which were which. There was never some guy standing in front of a blue screen in the studio while a picture of the hospital was added behind him to simulate on the spot reporting.
Maybe I'm just turning into an old fart, but yes, I think that sort of thing is when you start going too far, even if you haven't "lied." It is still an intentional deception.
Knock it off.
KFG
As ghastly as it might seem, this issue has been tested in court. When Akre and Wilson sued Fox in Florida under the Whistleblower act, for altering an rbgd story, after initially winning a $425K judgment, they lost an appeal because the Whistleblower Act only protects people resisting employer crime, and it was deemed that distorting the news, and falsifying news stories is not a crime.
u ff .cfm
It seems to me that pretending to be local is a far lesser offense.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/moreakrest
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/release022803.htm
Cheers,
--Stewart
A few years back I took a tour of KDGE here in dallas. The Edge is probably one of the biggest stations in the DFW metroplex, and there are a few other stations based out of the same offices.
Well, as we went into the booth for the 'oldies' station the DJ started talking to us and mentioned that he was recording the morning show for Phoenix that would air tomorrow. He also said that he was the voice for something like 6 other stations, just with different names, personas, etc.
Also, back in my small hometown the local Clear Channel station ditched the local morning guys and decided to go with some syndicated bullshit that is generic for ANY market; Think of them saying "Man, it sure is cold!" "Hell yeah!" and of course all of the call-in stuff is BS to the extreme. Call the number, give the `DJ` your request and it may be considered by the CC people if its requested in enough numbers.
You know what's a lot more satisfying? What lets you listen to the song a bunch of times, even on your iPod? Fucking KaZaa. Download music. Why would you request something then wait 4 hours for it to come on the radio?
It's deceptive when a report pretends to be local but isn't. ClearChannel aren't the only media company that does this, of course, nor is radio the only medium that does this. Ever wonder how three nightly news reports on three different channels manage to have precisely the same background image for a "live" report from [insert news hotspot here]?
Since nearly all media are controlled by private entities under capitalism, and since my theory is that free markets will result in oligopolies and monopolies, I think it is fair to say that this is just the start of the takeover of "news" by corporations. If you ever thought the media was responsible for the truth, you are sadly mistaken. The media has never had anything to do with the truth. In the past, the government controlled media* was nothing more than a propaganda outlet for the--you guessed it--government.
Nowadays, the media is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the corporations. Don't get me wrong. The government still has massive influence. One just needs to look at how the US government has manipulated television, movie studios, or print media since 9/11. At least 40% of what came out of US media in the last 2 years have been disinformation. Anyone wonder why the majority of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was an Al-Qaida member? Ever wonder why no one bothers to find out WHO cooked up the fake documents relating to plutonium in Niger? And best of all, ever wonder what happened to the Anthrax Assasin? Yes folks, the Anthrax Assasin, who incidentally killed more innocent Americans than Saddam Hussein, has dissapeared. And it does not stop with USA. I mean, just pick your favourite country and see how the media manipulates information. One needs to look no further than France and how the French government is manipulating the recent ban on religious ornaments as passing it off as liberalism. Clearly, this has nothing to do with liberalism. After all, liberalism is consistent with multiculturalism and banning things takes society even further away. Yet the French government is claiming it is the liberals who wanted it (this is kind of interesting given that Jacques Chirac is a right winger (Gaullist I think)). Of course, if you want the ultimate book on how the people's opinions are shaped, you can check out the highly acclaimed Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Or you can check out some books by Nazis (they were the ultimate propagandists).
Now, my comment is about capitalism. There have been countless stories that were not aired, or countless people who were fired, for simply telling the truth that had a potential to damage their parent corporations. Next time you watch NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, or National Geographic, and notice how it never criticizes G.E., you know why. This is just a tame example (clearly organizations like Fox News and Washington Post are more propagandist). You don't need me to tell you that. Just look around and you'll see. Something like 11 companies control 90% of all media in USA. For the smaller countries, it's even worse (2 or 3 companies control 95% of the media).
It doesn't get any better. People in "liberal" societies think that their news is diverse and comes from many sources. Oh, how mistaken they are. The vast majority of news (probably 80%+) comes from two sources (in North America): Reuters and Associated Press. Sure, there are hundreads of newspapers. Flip through them and you'll see that most news comes from AP and Reuters. Needless to say, AP and Reuters are for-profit entities who only care about making money.
All of this will just get worse and worse. The only thing keeping some of these media companies from merging with each other creating even larger multinational corporations are anti-trust laws and nationalistic laws (eg. laws preventing foreign ownership). Once those legislation are weakened (capitalism calls for the elimination of them), the final stage will be complete. Rest assured. Unless you lead a high-risk lifestyle, it will likely happen within your lifetime.
Welcome to the future world... where all news comes from the Associated World News Network (with its 'your only news source' slogan) versus FuX News Network (with its sloga
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
the company NEVER dictates which songs we play. Period.
What about the refusal to play "Imagine" for a while after 9/11? Or the ban on playing the Dixie Chicks.
Meta-territory here, but was there a vote on bleating-acceptance I missed, or...? Didn't Nirvana's "here we are now, entertain us" attitude end a decade ago?
..you know, the opposite of wanting to be spoonfed?
Part of the problem could stem from casting oneself as "the audience". An audience passively consumes what it is served. I don't know, but shouldn't (being part of creating what is) Slashdot, be
668.5
No one has a problem with people tele-commuting. But people DO have a problem when you LIE. That is exactly what this guy did. I don't care where you are. But if you say you are this or that, and you are not, then I DO care. Why does he have to lie? Why is he lying? Well, the answer is pretty simple. He is trying to manipulate people. If he is lying about such a little thing, maybe he is lying about all sorts of other things. You just don't know--and that's the point! He lost ALL his CREDIBILITY with that lie. I don't know who this guy is and I don't care about the weather. BUT can *I* be sure that he isn't going to lie and say that a medicine is safe because he took it (when in fact he didn't)? Or when he says that you cannot be charged for speeding less than 10km/h over the speed limit (when in fact he may be wrong)?
It's just unfortunate that you still give him the credibility that you do. I think it would be better if you became a little more sceptical. No wonder the majority of people fall for politician's lies. If people didn't fall for it, politics would be 100x better.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
And if there's no alcohol, then people can't get it and get behind the wheel of a car drunk...except that alcohol is legal, it's driving while intoxicated that's not. So why are drugs so different?
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
I don't know why but that article made me chuckle "heh, Boston outsources its news/weather reporting to Florida". It's reminds me of how Indian phone center workers are sometimes trained in different regional US accents to create the illusion that they're local to the US customer.
Exactly.. All we have here is an older guy who got tired of the cold winters in the NorthEast. The station was nice enough, or valued him highly enough, to work with him and allow him to broadcast remotely.
This is not the same as the other trend of local stations outsourcing their news to same generic centralized national news network.. Eliminating any local/personal perspective and using the radio equivalent of USA Today to save a few bucks.
The fact that they hide this from their listeners is a bit questionable. But, it's not a big deal. The guy is a long time Bostonian, doing news specifically for Boston.. Do you also insist that he is the guy out investigating the stories on the streets? Is it disingenuous that someone else does the legwork, and the DJ reads the story as if HE figured it all out?
Many media conglomerates do the same thing with traffic reports. Here in Memphis, one company handles traffic for all of the CBS/Viacom/Infinity radio stations, and even has a live TV studio set up in their building so they can give traffic reports to the NBC TV station.
No, I don't understand why NBC and CBS are working together in this regard, there's something weird going on. The contact info for one local radio station gives @cbs.com email addresses, but check the postal address, 1960 Union Ave. They broadcast from the same building as the local NBC affiliate.
The ClearChannel stations have their own competing alternative called the Total Traffic Network. All of the CC stations have the same guy/gal reporting the traffic each day.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Yes, I did read the article. Why did his station choose to conceal the fact that he was telecommuting? They could even have made some news out of it, for goodness' sake--their own live newscasts from their man-on-the-scene in Florida. Might add a bit of spice to their otherwise dull and drab weather reports. Heck, he could just have avoided making any comments about being cold. What's wrong with the weather guy just reading the damn weather report, without added inane chatter?
But no, they chose to hide it, and deliberately misled their audience. Sure, in an absolute sense it's not really a big thing, but where should you draw the line? If he had been claiming to be on location in Baghdad, would it then be okay to be outraged?
If a radio station, or any other news outlet, wants to be considered trustworthy, then they must avoid even a hint of deception. It's not appropriate for them to mislead their audience as long as they only mislead about things that they think aren't important.
~Idarubicin
Back when I had cable here in Seattle, I would watch Mariners games on Fox Sports Northwest. For the postgame, these two (rather annoying) sportscasters (can't remember the names, it was a couple years ago) would come on, either ecstatic that the Mariners had won, or disappointed that they had lost. So, I go visit the inlaws' in Detroit, catch a Tigers game on Fox Sports (whatever it is in Detroit), and for the postgame, it's the same two guys, and these same two sportscasters are bummed out by the Tigers' poor showing (go figure)! So, what gives? I'm now picturing a couple guys sitting in a studio down in LA, doing sports for all of the various "local" sports programs across the country. I guess this is an efficient way of doing sports broadcasting, but it seems dishonest and unethical. Can anyone verify that my suspicions are true, or is it possible that these two guys got demoted to covering Detroit sports?
That is kind of a silly position. Should mountain-climbers, motorcyclists, and others whose hobbies involve higher-risk activities than using drugs also have to excuse themselves from public assistance? What about smokers and drinkers?
I don't use any drugs other than alcohol (I even gave up caffeine about six months ago). However, most of the ones that are currently illegal are safe when used in a proper environment and unpolluted with poor manufacturing ingredients and whatever the street dealer decided to cut them with.
Opiates and cocaine? They're safe enough to be used in hospitals (morphine is common, cocaine is used for certain types of surgery).
Amphetamines? The Air Force feeds them to its pilots.
Tryptamines (e.g. mushrooms, DMT)? No physical health issues at all, unless you eat so many mushrooms that your stomach bursts.
The list goes on. Certain drugs have certain risks (particularly the ones with addictive properties, as well as the dissociative hallucinogens like PCP and ketamine which are dangerous and unpredictable), but almost all of them are less harmful to the body than alcohol and tobacco.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
When I asked Slashdot about a user (subscriber?) moderated story submissions queue, their reply (thanks!) was that such participation causes "social problems". They're experts, but I'd like to see a way to experiment with that social dynamic, so we can solve the social problems, instead of avoiding them. Sure, we could hack user moderation into the Slashcode story submission queue, and launch "OpenSlashdot (TM)", but without the large experienced community, the experiment won't work so well. Meanwhile, many story submissions disappear into an unaccountable black hole, while many other reposts appear weekly.
--
make install -not war
I do a news-commentary-wild half-baked rant show on a community station in Toronto twice a week. A few months ago, the station's transmitter burned out on a Sunday night. My first show is early Monday morning.
Upon arriving at the control room, I found a note on the console informing the next hosts that the station had been silent since at least 9:30 pm the previous night. Naturally, the paid staff generally don't work on the weekend, especially on a Sunday evening, so no one actually called the Monday morning hosts, myself included. Since I wasn't sure if we were broadcasting again[0], I went through with the show I planned anyway, even after a couple people called wondering where the hell the signal was. I did this, despite the probability that no one could listen, because there was no way for me to be sure that we had no audience at all. A prof with decades of experience in radio taught us to never say anything near a mic that we would not want anyone to hear on-air[1] [2], and I've taken this to heart.
ObOnTopicComment: Not only am I straight about where I'm broadcasting from, I'm quite open about the editorial slant that will be broadcast[3] and encourage the listeners to confirm what I spew with other, probably more reputable sources.
[0] The low-power backup came online before the next show, and we finally got back to full power a couple weeks later once repairs were completed.
[1] And provided some graphic examples of what happens when on-air people don't watch their mouths.
[2] I've made this mistake a couple times, once with the mic on. Nothing major or offensive, just dumb. Still, I learned my lesson.
[3] "Libertarian socialist", if it matters. I figure it's better to be open about my political views and admit I'm as biased as the next person, than to claim objectivity and get called on it when my personal bias creeps in anyway. I don't fudge the facts, and I correct my mistakes on-air. I'm not a journalist, but I know better than to fake things I can be called on, which apparently this station did not.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
They have a point. They're called "news readers" in the UK, and "radio personalities" in the US.. Talking heads. They're not journalists.
That whole job can be automated anyway. Check out Ananova. A few more years of improvement, and we'll be able to ditch most TV celebrities.
Well, kuro5hin did run a story calling Bin Laden a (misunderstood) "freedom fighter" and his war against the US a "strategic move".
If that's the kind of stories user moderation results in then I'd say user moderation sucks.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
...and before computers, many stations did literally use a categorized box of file cards. One adult contemporary station I worked at in the late 70s, had 8 numbered categories. 1s were the top 10 or so current hits. 2s were either upcoming or downsliding current songs. 3s we called recurrents and were mostly hits of the past several months. 4 were album tracks, IIRC. 5s were slightly hippish album tracks (eg. Dire Straits, John Handy "Hard Work"). 6s and 7s were oldies. 8s were older oldies (from 50s & 60s). Depending on daypart we had different repeating sequences of these #s we followed in selecting file cards during our shifts. My evening shift, IIRC, was 62716346271635(repeat). Morning shifts would play less new stuff, the theory being to ease people in to their day with comfortably familiar tunes.
As we played each song we made a notation on a grid on the card of the date and time played. With the older songs particularly, you avoided playing the same song in the same hour of successive days. Pre-disco era there were a couple other rules that were common to most mainstream formats - you never played 2 female vocals in a row and you never played 2 records by black artists in a row (the cards for which had an "R" notation in the upper right corner, to make sure you knew). Yes, that was racist and wrong, but that's the way it was.
Anyone who hasn't worked in the industry probably has no idea how much thought and phychology goes into determining how radio formats work. Of course some of the theory behind some formats was arguably bogus, such as Lee Abrams "Superstars" consultancy (music in a particular key appealed to particular psychographic groups for instance). Superstars and Lee Abrams, then of Burkhart/Abrams, were largely resposible for the homogenization of album rock, beginning in the late 70s.
Actually, he says he's in Boston all of the time, and 100% of the time he says that he's telling the truth. He avoids using "here" phrase constructions when he's in Florida, but that's only four weeks out of the year. (The station likely chose the remote setup instead of giving him 4 extra weeks of vactation...)
So what if Dan Rather, instead of traveling to the middle of a hurricane to report live, just used a blue screen and a wind machine, and had someone off screen throw a tree branch or two at him? Is that ok too?
This happened in Australia just recently to do with the Iraq war. A current affairs reporter claimed to be in Iraq, and was saying shit such as "Look us anywhere we want. We are in a truck which could be filled with weapons and no one has stopped us." I also heard (didn't see all of it) that he claimed they were being fired at by Iraqi's.
It was later exposed he had just been going thru the Australian outback, and the few shots that looked like they were from Iraq, were. But they weren't shot by him, they were added in later from other news broadcasts.
The article says that he gets a break of two weeks each bitterly cold winter month in Florida, paid for by the studio. He broadcasts from Florida while he's there, probably because the studio doesn't want to spend the money seeing one of their employees out of action for half the month, half of every year.
The other half of winter, presumably, he's down in Boston freezing his mucus membranes off with the rest of us. When he's saying he knows how bad five below zero is even before the wind chill is taken into account, he probably does know what he's talking about.
He may even know more clearly than everybody who's stuck back in Boston, because he's able to actually get warm (like really warm, you know, so warm you don't even have a runny nose, and you can leave the beer in the fridge rather than in the cupboard so it's not too cold to drink.
And then, every two weeks, he gets to leave those balmy, sunny shores and go back to grey skies, rain wind and slush and frozen snot hanging from your top lip. The horror of anticipation that hovers in the last inch of frosty air as you grit your teeth and prepare to drop your naked bum onto a FUCKING COLD toilet seat at six o'clock in the morning...He knows. He can empathise. That's all he may be doing. He doesn't want to tell everybody that he's down in sunny Florida, because then everybody's going to want to lynch him when he gets back at the end of the fortnight.
Rant over. Need beer
PS: It's 32 lovely sunny degrees celcius here, and I get to drink beer out of the freezer (-6c). See? You all hate me now :)
Very few stations play listener requests at any time. Radio figured out a long time ago that only about 1% of our listeners call the studio, and their tastes and listening patterns are not usually representative of the total audience. Unless you're a teeny-bopper, be glad 14-year-olds aren't deciding what you hear on the radio.
We do, of course, take note of what people are calling for. But we generally defer to more scientific methods of determining the tastes of our target audience: call-out research, auditorium testing, and record sales data.
I happen to know the Rock programmer in Miami. He's a smart guy -- hardly the sort of person to make knee-jerk decisions. In any case, it sounds as if you had local programmers attempting to tailor their stations to the community. Dunno if they made the right call, but it's not a case of sinister corporate censorship.
As an aside, I *did* drop one song on our Classic Rock station. We held Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner" for several months after 9-11. Nobody complained. I'm with you on the appropriateness of Lennon's "Imagine."
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
They're idiots.
Anyone who wants to cover local news from a distance is insane. There are major setbacks to doing it, but living in the environment and seeing what is going on with your own eyes is ESSENTIAL.
This will all soon sort itself out.
No one will listen to local news set far away when they have local news from real locals sitting right next to them on the dial. It is only a matter of time before the people will realize this when they say something wrong on the air repeatedly, and then the other guys will be at the big event news when it happens across the street. The public just assumes that you are local when covering local news. The public will notice this soon enough, and when it does, they will lose market share that will not make up for the cost losses.
This is a new thing. I predict it will not be a very long thing. It will be over in a year and a half when the corporate nimrods bong-rip ideas like "we could do local news cheaper across the country!" die a horrible, horrible death.
News is exteremely competitive. They just replaced their personal insight with a phone call. This is NOT a smart move.