To Ms. Lindsay Kruger's credit, she wrote me back yesterday to defend her coverage. She said she stood up above the crowd and said she counted twice as many on the anti-choice side of the street. The numbers varied on both sides during the day, but it is a fact that more than 400 people signed Planned Parenthood's sign-up sheet, when they had expected about 50.
Ms. Kruger was going for the story that was more interesting to her, and the loud anti-choice turnout to her was the big story. I really disagree, their voices are loud, but they always will be there. To me the huge story was the 400 people that showed up (and gave their name and contact info to Planned Parenthood), which I see as the beginning of a huge sea change in West River politics.
She said she wanted to avoid "they said -- and they said" report and found KOTAs coverage not very interesting.
If she figures giving Jean French free airtime to share her arrogant views (well, she does look really good on TV, so, hey)... I suppose that's okay. My main beef was quick summary of the anti-choice folks as "celebrating" and the pro-choice folks as "angry". It just didn't capture what went down at the corner of 9th and St Joe on Thursday.
I guess we disagree on how balanced the story came out on the Thursday 10 pm news. I appreciate she is clearly listening to comments. That's a good thing.
It's important that we call people on unfair coverage and praise good coverage. Media Matters really has made a difference, and we can too if we call them as we see them and let the media know how we feel.
(That goes for anything we hear or read, including this blog. I would love to see more comments here. If you respond to one my posts, please identify yourself, using a screen name is fine, and please, feel free to include information that backs up your point. I'm always up for learning something new!)
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3 days ago
As a journalist, I can tell you that reporters don't get to choose the part of the story that is most interesting to them. A "they said -- and they said" story is exactly what that event called for to give the story objectivity.
ReplyDeleteGetting a big anti-abortion turnout is not really news around here. Getting a large abortion-rights rally together clearly is. The backlash to the anti-abortion side's action in the Legislature was the news that day.
Kruger's portrayal of the rallies was clearly biased, maybe not intentionally, but still skewed. Real journalists know this, and anyone who was at the rallies knows that KNBN's coverage favored the anti-abortion side.
Look at who owns the channel assignment that KNBN started out on and the orignal purpose that said channel was being used for. Seems to me that the General Manager hired a reporter/anchor who would toe the same line.
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