July 24 - Pet Peeve Monday - Newsreaders Gone Wild

This week’s PET PEEVE is something that has bothered me for a while.

Actually I think that is the definition of a PET PEEVE.

Something that starts as a slow burn or irritation and festers into a full blown PET PEEVE over time.

The PET PEEVE are News Anchors that insert themselves into the story to show their bravery (or stupidity). It began for me with Hurricane Katrina, got worse with the Iraq War, and came to a boil with the latest turmoil in the Middle East.

During Katrina you had NBC’s Brian Williams in the SuperDome claiming that rapes and murders were taking place. Never happened. You had CNN’s Anderson Cooper hip deep in sewer water and talking about the lack of food. He didn’t miss a drink, meal, teleprompter, or hair appointment. Finally there was Fox’s Geraldo Riveria creating the news by saving people that didn’t want saving.

Fast forward to the War on Terror and you have more of the same. The real disgrace was Geraldo again. While covering American military activity in Afghanistan in 2001, Geraldo was criticized for taking a gun into a war zone and derided for misplacing the scene of a "friendly fire" incident by 300 miles (which he later blamed on his confusing two different incidents, although the other incident didn't take place until three days after his report). While covering the war in Iraq in 2003 he was censured by the U.S. military (and reportedly booted out of Iraq) for carelessly broadcasting details which revealed tactical information about an upcoming U.S. attack.

However in Iraq, the newsreaders became newsmakers. They got to close to the fire and got burned. The most high profile casualty was ABC’s Bob Woodruff.

Six months after Bob Woodruff was seriously hurt by a roadside bomb in Iraq, television networks covering the Mideast violence have not learned their lesson.

His successor, Charles Gibson, is in the Middle East this week. He is squarely in harm's way covering the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militia that controls much of south Lebanon.

Though it's clearly dangerous in Israel, the networks say it's at least more predictable than what's going on in Iraq. Someone needs to explain to me how a terriorsts group’s random lobbing of unguided missiles into a residential area is safe.

Fox’s Shepard Smith ducked into a building in Nahariya, Israel last week after Hezbollah-launched rockets fell nearby, one destroying an apartment building

NBC’s Brian Williams scrambled into a bomb shelter in Haifa and waited for the concussion to tell him that an incoming rocket had landed. He also watched Hezbollah rockets being launched and landing from above while in an Israeli helicopter. Did he not know that an Israli helicopter had crashed earlier in the day? I did. I saw it on MSNBC, a NBC AAA farm team.

CNN's Anderson Cooper was the first of the American anchors to report from Israel last week. “You don't want to overplay that side of the job," Mr. Anderson says. "The fact that somebody came under fire in a certain location has a certain amount of drama and ... audience interest, but in terms of the overall dynamic of the story and what's going on out there, its relative importance has to be measured quite carefully."

If I want drama, I watch any of the CSI’s, Law and Order’s, or My Fair Brady on TV.

The only network without a lead anchor in the Middle East is CBS, with interim anchorman and managing editor Bob Schieffer working from New York. Former NBC Today co-anchor Katie Couric is scheduled to replace Schieffer when she becomes the permanent anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News on Sept. 5.

Couric is thw moat expendable TV journalists. See my April 5 BLOG on her insignificance.

Newsreaders putting themselves in harm’s way are more show business than journalism.

There is an old saying in the news business, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Too bad, it has become the newsreaders that want to lead the news, one way, or another.

Below is Mr. Riveria with his bandaged nose and his 1980 porn star mustache. He was hit by a randomly lobbed studio chair.