Thursday, May 19, 2005

This initial posting for KPTV News Watch may be a little longer than subsequent ones. I want you to get a feel for just how wretched this alleged "news" show is and to aquaint you with the usual suspects and their modus operandi.

Well, it was a fairly typical night for the KPTV 10 PM "news" show (with one notable exception which I'll reveal later in this post).

The show hit the ground running, leading off with a story about a local Realtor convicted of identity theft (KPTV's new favorite crime, it would seem). There was no apparant violence connected with this crime, violating the "if it bleeds, it leads" credo but hey, you can't have a hot hand every night, right? Besides, it was identity theft, the scary crime du jour.

When they cut back from the video tape to the reporter on the scene (where, as usual, absolutely nothing was happening, raising the question of what exactly the purpose of having the reporter "on scene" is), she was holding a fistful of pictures of the perpetrator. A few months back, you see, KPTV instituted this thing where a reporter out on a "field piece" has to hold an object which relates, usually in an irrelevant way, to the story. This has led to such absurd sights as a reporter holding a pizza box while reporting on a story about a pizza delivery guy who was robbed. Just in case you had never actually seen a pizza box, I guess. Hey, it's possible.

From there, the "news" moved on to the next piece of intentional emotional terrorism: a story about criminals being released early from a local prison. Wayne Garcia, the male half of the anchor team, informed us via his voice-over that the sheriff "wants" to cut the budget. This, almost certainly, isn't even in the same zip code as the reality; the sheriff HAS to cut the budget because he has less money to operate with.

Oregon is a referendum state, allowing voters to decide a lot more issues than some other states, including tax increases. Despite KPTV's daily attempts to convince people that violent, frightening crime is everywhere at all times, voters have been reluctant to raise taxes even to give police departments more money. This, of course, leaves local law enforcement little choice but to release some low-level offenders early to free up cell space. This should have been explained in the context of KPTV's "news" report but, of course, it wasn't. There was, of course, the requisite video of criminals leaving the jail. Cower in your homes, citizens!

Next up was a story about a deadly shooting by the police. The alleged perp/dead guy had a knife, so see if you can guess what the reporter on the scene had as a prop? Did you guess "knife?" See, you're catching on already! Yes, David Wilson was holding a big ol' scary blade while reporting from the scene (where, of course, absolutely nothing was happening). Every night is Show And Tell on KPTV's 10 o'clock "news" show!

The next story was such a tear-jerker than I'm surprised that they didn't lead with it. It seems a local woman, who is a cancer victim currently undergoing chemotherapy which has made her hair fall out, suffered a fire which destroyed her home. She's got cancer, is bald AND just lost her house? Whoo! That's at least a triple, right? Wait, it gets better. She actually cried on camera, talking about how she was suddenly wiped out. If THAT isn't the Grand Slam of Tabloid Journalism, well, I don't know what would be.

It's now 10:08 and time for our first commercial break. Not before we tease a couple of upcoming stories, though. "Cyber Spies On Your Computer" and an "American Idol Conspiracy Theory." Wake the kids and drag them in front of the TV! Irrelevancy Ahoy!

Back from the break, we get a story about parents fighting back against school violence in Salem. The reporter had a box cutter to show us. Do the KPTV news vans have prop closets? I wonder.

Stop the presses! The next "news" story was about a sex offender who moved! No, he hasn't committed any new crime that you need to know about. He just moved. Hey, he's a convicted sex offender! Isn't that enough for you?? What sex offense did he commit? What level of offense was it? Where exactly did he move to? Details, details. A sex offender moved from somewhere to somewhere. Lock the kids in a closet, bar the door and sit on the couch with a shotgun on your lap.

Before the next commercial break, we were treated to a flurry of stories about chaos and crime all over this great land of ours, including:
*A bowling alley's roof collapsing
*Some kids missing and their adult relatives dead in Idaho
*A Roseburg, OR cop shot
*A hazing investigation at the University of Washington
*A slippery freeway in Seattle
*Mary Kay Letourneau reportedly getting married this weekend
*A new shopping center opening in Tigard, OR

A rational viewer might wonder if the story about the cop being shot didn't deserve better placement in the show, seeing as how it resembled actual news. Is the order of stories on KPTV's "news" show determined by the spin of a carnival wheel? The Universe is full of such Cosmic Mysteries!

It's 10:20 and time for another commercial break. Before we go, though, we get a tease about the upcoming Dirty Dining segment.

Back from the break, it's time for Dirty Dining! This is something that KPTV does once a week, in a simulation of real investigative reporting. The local health department releases "report cards" which grade restaurants on a scale of 1-100. KPTV sends out someone (an intern?) with a hidden camera to the most recent restaurant to get a failing or barely passing grade. Yup, they're a regular 60 Minutes there at Channel 12! This is followed by the requisite non-hidden camera interview with the manager of the offending eatery, who dutifully explains that the problem has now been corrected and that it won't happen again.

This week's sacrificial lamb was a hamburger joint which received a barely passing score of 66. Of course, since 66 is a passing score (even if just barely), ambushing the establishment could be construed as harassment, but hey, it's a weekly feature! They have to fill it with something, right?

10:26. Time for another commercial break. First, though, there's a tease for the "Cyber Spies" story (again) and Larry King's appearance at the Michael Jackson trial.

Back. We get a story about U.S. Airways and America West merging. Will this raise ticket prices? Who knows? Not KPTV apparantly, nor do they seem particularly concerned with the issue. This is followed by a story about "Sugar Mommas," whatever the hell THEY are. Near as I could make out, there are men who go online, seeking to meet and date women with money. Wow, that has never happened before in the history of humanity! The women are "Sugar Mommas." Didn't seem like much of a story to me, but Shauna Parsons, the other anchor, informed the audience that it was a "new trend" and that KPTV would be telling us more about it soon. Thank God. We wouldn't want to not be informed about a "new trend," now would we? (Side thought: does appending the word "cyber" to something automatically make it newsworthy? Seems so.)

10:32 and time for the weather. Gee, didn't they have a story about "cyber bullies" to push the weather segment back tonight? Guess not.

Not much I can really say about the weather segment. If you've seen a TV weather forecast, then you know what this one looks like. Let's move on.

After the weather, we take a break, but not before we are told about the upcoming Final Cut segment.

The Final Cut is something that was introduced a few months back. Near as I can tell, it's nothing more than a fast-paced compilation of stories (many celebrity-based) that happen to involve visually interesting video tape. KPTV's "news" show, like Early Man, is attracted to shiny objects. Oh, one other thing: During the Final Cut, there is a small countdown clock at the lower right corner of the screen. Why? Who knows? It is sort of entertaining, I admit, to see if the Final Cut segment ends in sync with the clock reaching zero. It's kind of like the digital timer on the bomb in a James Bond movie except no one gets to cut a wire at the last second. Maybe they can introduce that in Final Cut 2.0.

By my count, the Final Cut segment included no fewer than 17 individual stories, including the much-hyped "Cyber Spies" piece. After all the hoopla, you'd be forgiven if you thought it somehow involved Al Qaeda. What this story turned out to be was KPTV lending a local family a laptop computer for two weeks. When the time was up, the "news" people took the computer to The Geek Squad (a company which makes house calls to repair computers) for analysis.

I know you're just dying to know what The Geek Squad found on the hard drive, right? Well, did you know that some companies actually install tracking cookies on your computer without your permission so they can track where you surf and sell that information? Oh, you did, huh, probably because you've actually used an anti-spyware program to remove crap like that from your own computer. Well, KPTV managed to find an upscale-looking white family who apparantly was blissfully unaware of that common fact. They were appalled, I tell you, appalled! Yup, that was the story.

Among the other vital stories crammed into the Final Cut segment: some cross-promotion for Good Day, Oregon, (KPTV's wake-up show); some more cross-promotional crap about the Fox show The O.C.; "Hollywood Buzz" about Lindsay Lohan looking skinny these days and, oh yeah, that fast-breaking American Idol "conspiracy theory" story. That turned out to be twaddle about how some people believe that the order of performers on an "Idol" CD reveals the order of the final contestants on the TV show. As Shauna Parsons informed us, however, it isn't true. Thank God! I was worried there for a moment that the show might be fixed. What about the allegations that Paula Abdul slept with one of the contestants, thereby skewing the outcome of the contest? Isn't rigging a TV game show illegal?? You're still worried about that? That is SO last week!

OK, the only thing left after the next commercial break is the sports. I don't really care about that, so I didn't take notes. As with the weather, if you've ever seen a sports segment, you know what this one looks like.

OK, what was that disappointment I mentioned at the start of the commentary? Well, unlike most nights, tonight's show didn't include anyone saying, "You don't expect that in this neighborhood" or a variation on that phrase. Most nights you get a crime story--usually early in the hour--which includes a neighbor of the victim saying that. As I said in the introduction to this blog, this, in my opinion, is intended to frighten the viewer into believing that crime is on the increase everywhere, even in "good" (read: WHITE) neighborhoods like his and that he needs to watch the news every night to keep abreast of the latest affront to civilized decency.

So, did you happen to notice anything missing from the list of stories? Did you notice that there wasn't one single word about the war? Is that wacky war thing even still going on? Did any soldiers die in Iraq in the last twenty-four hours? If they did, you'd never hear about it if your only news source was KPTV. Did the mayor of Portland cut a ribbon today? Did the city council pass a law which might affect you? Don't look to the KPTV "news" show for the answers to those questions.

KPTV hasn't seen fit to say one single word about the Scottish Member of Parliament who told off an American Senator to his face (video of which exists). Nor did their 10 o'clock "news" show mention anything tonight about the ongoing fight over the filibuster nor any about several other national stores. To my knowledge, they have never so much as mentioned the Downing Street Memo, which proves that George Bush conspired with Tony Blair to get us into a war illegally. Hey, when you have important stories about non-existant American Idol conspiracies, you can't fit everything into your "news" show. You gotta have priorities, for God's sake!

Starting to get the picture of what a festering piece of manure the KPTV 10 o'clock "news" show is? If not, don't worry. You will as the days pass and I continue to chronicle this trainwreck.