I was hanging out with my Aussie friend Geoff Hibble last night at a local pool hall. In-between games, I notice the TV above the bar is airing a news story on a Garner man arrested for indecent liberties with a minor. It was the perfect story for the media’s favorite hobby of demonizing the Internet, since the girl’s father used a webcam to spy on his daughter.
While the story itself is disturbing, what really ticked me off was the way the TV news filmed it. The suspect lived in a very nice neighborhood in Garner, as some video shots proved. Lots of new homes on well-manicured lawns.
So who do they choose to interview? Some old tobacco-chewing Bubba who has a clothesline on his front porch! There it was, framed in the shot while the Garner bumpkin drawled on about how he doesn’t know nothin’ ’bout the dang ol’ Internet. At least someone thought to pull his tobacco-stained overalls off the damn clothesline before the camera started rolling.
I think Garner should assign a PR flack whose job it is to shadow any news trucks in town. That way the town might have a chance to polish its image. On the other hand, the station doing the story is based in Durham, which has no shortage of problems of its own.
Yet another way the news media can distort the truth.