December 2, 2006

"Cue sympathy in 3... 2... 1..."

It is possible to hate the media without being a paranoid conservative.

In fact, this reporter, Emily Lopez, is a reporter for the local Fox News affiliate. But she's not any different from any of the other reporters who have been swarming over our apartment complex for the past few days.

Last night, on the hour, the pond would light up and the freshly made-up and coifed Talents would emerge from their heated news vans to deliver fresh intros to the heartwarming story of the woman who drove into a freezing pond and the hero who rescued her. And her little dog, too.

A few things. First of all, this photo is pretty representative of the attitude of this reporter, as well as the others on the scene. It's not a trick of the moment. Most of the bystanders were pretty nice to the poor woman who drove her car into the water, but unless there was a camera pointing in their direction, the Talents were unconcerned.

Their reporting is pretty sloppy, too. In her report, Lopez reports that the driver hit an icy patch and went into the pond. Really? You don't think perhaps she tried to back out of a parking place in front of the pond and was in drive instead of reverse? And perhaps hit the gas instead of the brake when she realized what was going on? Because she didn't go into the pond from the street, she went in from the parking lot, from an angle perpendicular to the driveway.

No, apparently Emily Lopez, crack reporter, got out of the heated news van, put down her Starbucks cup long enough to use her mad journalism skills to determine that the driver was moving through the parking lot (with a speed bump next to the spot where she went in the water) at such a high rate of speed that when she hit this mysterious icy patch, she lost control of her car, did a hard left, hopped a curb, crossed about twenty feet of ground, crashed into a big rock wall and still had enough momentum to make out about fifteen feet out onto the pond.

Because the other possibility? There's no tragic victim and no tie-in to the Big Scary Winter Storm. Just a person who made a mistake and freaked out. Hard to come up with a 3-D graphic for that.

Slow news day, for the local media and for me, too, come to think of it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup news makes news. Good times.

Let it be a lesson to everyon though that if you car falls in the water you need to either roll down the windows or break the windo and swim out, or wait until the car has filled up with water over your head and the pressure in the car has equalized and then you can open the door. Ever since I was in a really bad car accident on a bridge I've had nightmares about being in a car that is sinking so I learned what to do in case that ever happened to me.

Michelle O'Neil said...

This is exactly the reason I got outta the bid-ness.

Anonymous said...

Quaffed, or coifed? :)

Anonymous said...

Ah, it makes me sad.

I sound like I'm 90 (I'm actually thirty-fourteen), but what is this world coming to?! The older I get, the more I wish I could live with the Amish.

Robert Hudson said...

Thanks. (Although I sort of liked my spelling.)

Naomi said...

That is a fabulously (horribly) revealing picture.

Anonymous said...

We call Fox News on Channel 4 Faux News. Honestly, I'd feel better about them if they would just Learn To Read.

topcad said...

Rob, I am not sure what your beef is. Is it fake sympathy or alleged sloppy reporting? Did you want Emily to jump in and help pull the car out? Oh, and that's a great misleading picture. Are you mad because she's smiling while on the phone? Maybe she's smiling because she is telling her boss that everyone's okay, including the woman's dog. Since you linked to it, I am guessing you know that Fox 4 now has a community page on their website where you could even blog about this incident.

Robert Hudson said...

Oh, and that's a great misleading picture.

Is it misleading, Todd? Were you there? Did you see the reporters and how they behaved towards the survivor of the crash? I mean, you sound like you've got some insider knowledge here. Please share.

No? Just spouting off? Knock yourself out, friend.