A quick examination of KY3's website shows no mention of Tuesday's incident in Clinton in which a reporter and a photographer were arrested when they did not move after Missouri Highway Patrol troopers told them to.
The Springfield station has six stories on the collapse of the Elks Lodge building in which one man was killed on its website, but no mention of the incident which has become a major topic of discussion in newsrooms across the state, and thanks to publicity from blogs such as Lost Remote, across the nation.
The station's coverage of the collapse was thorough, which is documented on the website, with stories and video links, and despite the hubbub over the arrest, the building's collapse and the death were the most important stories. Still, it would seem that KY3 should have something on the site.
What happened to reporter Sara Sheffield, pictured, and photographer Cliff Erwin, on the face of it, would seem to exemplify the type of cutthroat local journalism that I satirized in Small Town News, but a close examination of the situation shows it to be a bit more complex.
Ms. Sheffield and Erwin were not interfering with law enforcement officers and rescue workers. They were in a public section, just not the media section. Sure, it can be argued that they should have stayed where they were told, but wouldn't it have made more sense to let them do their job, get their footage on the air and perhaps keep other sightseers glued to their television screens instead of heading for the Elks building site.
While I can understand the necessity of keeping control when you have a situation that draws a swarm of media, wouldn't keeping them with the public have done the job just as well?
It is too easy to play the blame the media game and people are far too quick to get in line and take their shots. This one merits a closer examination and a reasoned discussion.
Here are some links to KY3's Clinton coverage:
Building collapse killed one man
Rescue took hours because of age of historic building
Elks Lodge leader was brother, father, jokester, friend
Elks Lodge collapse damaged building next door
Building collapse shows need to protect old structures
Elks Lodge building rumbled before it collapsed
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Surprisingly, no mention of the incident can be found on the websites of the other Springfield television stations either. KOLR and KSFX, the Nexstar stations, have solid coverage of the building collapse, while KSPR has no mention of it.
The print media, of course, had the story
6 comments:
That arrest will make that reporter's career.
Randy,
I don't think you can truly make the argument "they should have stayed where they were told" as they had been reporting from one location for about nine hours. I've seen no report that indicates the crew was interfering with rescue efforts or otherwise in the way of any official. Rather, it appears an over-zealous officer didn't like where the crew was located and wanted them to move to an aribitrarily designated "media area."
Randy,
If you're truly SURPRISED that the other Springfield TV web sites didn't have mention of the KY3 arrests, then you aren't reading those sites very often. They NEVER have their news updated. Lack of mention of the KY3 incident isn't a deliberate omission, it's just standard operating procedure.
No, you've got me pegged. I was being just a tad sarcastic with that remark. If I had a news story about a comepetitor, especially one that the competitor was a little shy about publicizing, I would jump right on it.
I am amazed at how many television stations fail to realize how much of a promotional tool (as well as an informational service), regularly updating websites would be.
KOLR 10 and KSFX sites are updated often.
KSPR seems to update once every couple of weeks or so.
If by "often" you mean daily, then sure, they're updated. Shouldn't they do more than that?
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