I would like to express my disappointment in the story done Thursday evening related to the plane in New York that landed in the Hudson River. The story I object to was a discussion on the Toronto Island Airport and the potential for bird's causing plane crashes.
The issues I have with this story are:
- officials in New York had pleaded for the media not to speculate on the cause of the emergency, yet you chose to take the speculation of birds and run a story on it
- birds affecting take-offs and landings are infrequent and rarely lead to drastic emergencies
- the runway at the Island Airport requires incoming and outgoing planes to travel over the water and nowhere near inhabited land, so the risks of crashes impacting nearby residences are minimal at best
- crashes at the Island airport have been rare, not to mention the planes are small and not jet-propelled and therefore cannot reach the level of risk seen in the New York incident.
This story fulfilled the worst stereotypes of the media of being irresponsible, fear-mongering, sensationalistic, misleading and ultimately pointless. City TV, in my opinion, has gravitated to more of this kind of journalism and it's a disappointment to see what once was a progressive and original program go through such a demise (Why do we need a story practically every night warning us of some way we can be harmed, diseased and defrauded? Ok, we live in a world of risk, this isn't news. Save those stories for the things that are significant and might impact more than a handful of people.)
7 comments:
It draws viewers. That's why they do it. "Sensationalism" always sells. *sigh*
And, CTV owns them now, so it may be their pressure on the CITY TV news dept. to change how and what they report on.
Actually, Rogers owns Citytv. CTV owns the others including the CP24 news station and Much Music.
Every year, Citytv has its news story on "You can get more germs by touching a door handle than licking a toilet seat."
"If you place metal inside an operating microwave oven, you could cause a fire."
"If you place your tongue on cold metal, your tongue could get stuck to the metal."
"If you touch an electric eel, you could get shocked."
"If you smoke marijuana, you could get high."
"And now for a live traffic report with Cam Wolley at University and College."
Wolley: "If you drive, you might get stuck in traffic."
SD,
LOL...
City TV's intention is to scare the crap out of you so you stay home in fear and watch City TV.
Just like religion, so called news organizations can interpret anything they see or hear and make it fact. It's just a matter of time before Canada has journalism like the UK...where the headline will say, Martians Have Landed...and the story will start...well, not really. AND...that is just ok. Freedom of the press don't you know.
"... the all-pervading sophisticated and deceiving promotion of television and radio have become an omnipresent menace of corruption to the public mind and body."
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