Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
The local TV news station’s top story Saturday night started something like this: friends of a man whose baby died say it’s time to stop the finger-pointing. That’s funny, because it’s the “news reporter” doing the finger-pointing.
Here’s how it’s gone over the past few days: Holly Headache and her cohorts have been reporting a story about a couple who went on the lamb after their months-old baby went to the hospital with a head injury. The baby was taken off life support and died. Police eventually caught the couple after they stole a car.
The TV news readers reported the burial of the baby Friday, and they reported something to the effect that local investigators say it’s a death that involved “child abuse.” I don’t have the exact quote, but that’s the gist – investigators said it was child abuse.
Well, the problem is that nobody has been charged with anything resembling child abuse. The baby’s parents are in jail, but all they’ve been charged with is stealing a car. WLOS hasn’t mentioned the “child abuse” angle since they blared it Friday in their smarmy report.
Then they followed up Friday night with a totally one-sided report in which a friend of the mother “was talking exclusively with WLOS.” Here, WLOS verges on libelous material by quoting the mom’s friend all but saying the father killed the child.
There was apparently no attempt to talk to a friend of the father, or an attorney, because none was mentioned. (Usually they’ll make a big deal out of that, like Michelle Boudin dramatically holding a cellphone in the Nichols Furniture story as we hear the store recording saying “mailbox is full.”)
Then on Saturday night, I can only guess that some friends of family members of the father saw the Friday reports and demanded to have a say. So Holly Headache has the story from that side, defending the father.
All in all, it’s been some extremely weak “reporting,” though the term should be reserved for real journalists doing real work, not just half-assed “he said, she said” interviews and calling them news stories.
