Tuesday, June 26, 2007

By the Grace of Journalism, you're WRONG!

It's 8:31 p.m. on Tuesday evening and CNN's Headline News is running a crawl right now during the Nancy Grace show that says: "Just in: Jessie Davis body to be released any minute. Funeral arrangements pending."

Where in the world do they get that information???? I just called the Summit County Medical Examiner's and asked them about the info. The male voice on the other end said, "No. No. No." I asked if there's any way the body is being released tonight and again he said, "No. No. No." I asked again about the autopsy and he repeated the same trio of denial. I asked him about the Headline News crawl and he just sighed in frustration with bad information.

This is the kind of intentionally misleading information that makes it so much more difficult for the rest of the press to tell the real story. It's the kind of crawl that makes Jessie's family members call each other and get all worked up at a time when they need peace the most. It's just plain wrong on so many levels.

OK, It's now 8:39 p.m. and someone must have heard me yell at the screen. The crawl has been changed to say: "Just in: Jessie Davis body to released any day?" So now CNN has changed "minute" to "day" and added a question mark so as to give themselves a way out.

The whole thing reminds me of a John Stewart bit on the Daily Show when he showed the ridiculous banners Cable News folks put on the bottom of the screen. Things like "Nuclear secrets lost?" or "Can we trust the Russians?" and even "End Times?" Stuff to drum up controversy without having to actually committ to the thought.

Next thing you know someone will go TV saying they know who committed a murder because a person they've never met just called out of the blue and told them so.

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