‘Delusions of this degenerate hillbilly’

This post caught our eye, so we’re playing it here in hopes of keeping the conversation going about quality reporting. We appreciate what the writer, Waynesvegas, is saying. It helps us understand. And we do hope that things improve.

As we’ve said before, Russ Bowen is usually straight-up Russ, delivering quality news reports. That’s why Monday’s surprised us. Anyway, here’s Waynesvegas:

“We’ve really hit an all-time journalistic low,” Russ muttered to me as we finished interviewing a meth-head trailer whore, who claims that an amatuer Christian wrestler assalted her 6-year-old daughter at a public festival with a metal chair. “I know we have Russ,” I said, “I know.”
I thought back to how our day started. “This woman has no credibility,” Russ was telling the producers, “everyone besides her is saying that her kid was running around wild and accidentally ran into the chair. I really don’t think a minor redneck squabble is newsworthy.”
“We think it is,” was the answer from management, “so do it anyway.”
As we walked away from the meth-mom interview the Chief of Police for Canton yelled to us, “Good choice on stories…excellent news judgement!”
“We know,” we said “we know.”
The rest of the day was similar– many apologies to everyone involved that we “have to do this story,” and, “we don’t have a choice.”
Later, as I was editing a shot of some Christian wrestlers into the package (we didn’t have video of the actual incident, so we used general file video from the event to fill space) I thought, “wow… this is one classy story. I can’t believe we’re putting such depravity on television. How am I going to call myself a journalist after broadcasting the delusions of this degenerate hillbilly?”
I then went ahead and put her on TV anyway. After our liveshot, while I was getting our equipment put up, an elderly lady pulled up and said, “I can’t believe yall put that lady’s lies on TV! I saw the whole thing. The kid was unsupervised the whole time, and we couldn’t even find the mother for 5 minutes after it happened. She never even saw how her kid got hurt, and was drunk anyway.”
“I know,” I said, “I know.”

You see, Ashe…This story is meant to show that the reporters (and the photographers) don’t always pick the stories themselves and many times actually have no choice but to do the story. I do love my job most of the time, but am sometimes forced into compromising what “journalistic integrity” I fool myself into thinking that I have. Do keep the criticism coming, though (it was dead on in this case). Russ feels left out when he doesn’t make Ashvegas for a while. We in Waynesville can take your worst… so bring it on!

Peace,
Waynesvegas