I was watching the local news Sunday evening while cooking dinner [making a great Cashew Chicken dish I might add] and the first story that came up really surprised me. Our local ABC station, which tends to lead the ratings for area news, always has to have a "big story" as they call it and for this newscast it wasn't the deadly tornadoes racing through the mid-west, nor was it Vlady Putin getting re-elected in Russia for another 10 years, or even the story about a local police officer who had one of his tires stolen from his cruiser while parked out front of his own home. Nope, none of those. Any guess as to what could have been the "big story" this past Sunday evening? I'm just going to have to tell you because unless you saw it yourself you'll never figure it out in a million years: The Philadelphia Flower show!
Yep, a flower show that had opened a few days earlier was the lead story on the news. Unbelievable right? What really grinds my gears is that it became the lead story because this particular news station is the official media sponsor of the show. So they want people to attend and then see their logo and stuff all over the place.
This is the same thing that happens all the time on the local news when a station "reports" on a story about a TV show that airs on that particular network. CBS stations will do it for "Survivor" or FOX for "American Idol". But you know what...TV shows are not news, not unless all of the other stations are covering it too. Of course that never happens. No way in hell the NBC station is going to report about what happened last night "Dancing with the Stars". Never.
I certainly wasn't a journalism major back in college, but isn't it supposed to be fair and balanced and even impartial? Obviously they're being asked to do stories which depict the network show in good light, and if you ask me, there's something inherently wrong about that.
