Retired network reporter calls out lousy local TV

Ed Rabel, right, was a great correspondent for CBS News, and knows what good broadcast journalism is. He doesn't appear to be seeing much of it in Lincoln County, West Virginia, where he lives and watches stations in Charleston and Huntington.

"There is very little reason to watch the local news," Rabel writes in The Charleston Gazette. "If you're satisfied to simply see the day's digest of house fires, fender benders and high school reunions, fine. Otherwise, the regional boob-tube newscasts are nothing more than a 'vast wasteland' in the words of one-time FCC Chairman Newton Minow. Using my words, I would say the so-called newscasts are a colossal waste of time. Basically, the items they flog as news are merely undemanding fillers located between used-car commercials and mattress ads. Not to mention the announcements for male enhancement."

Rabel says the stations make much of the weather, even when it isn't news. "Instead of focusing on original reporting, the local stations are focused on cosmetics," he writes. "Not a country for old men and women, the local television "news" landscape is populated by bubble-heads and glib, young, sometimes pretty know-nothings. The truth is, they wouldn't know a news story if it slapped them in the face. When was the last time you saw an investigative piece about, let's see, the Massey Mine disaster? Or, how about, God forbid, an exclusive story that penetrated the precincts where politicians hide their secrets from the public?"

Rable blames station owners and managers fear "such stories might insult local advertisers or offend politicians on whose toes reporters might stomp. And investigative or original reporting is costly, meaning real reporters must be hired to do real reporting, a job that requires lots of time and money that the stations have no time for. Instead, I remember one Huntington TV station leading its newscast last December with the astonishing news that Christmas tree sales were on the rise. Hold the presses!
Someone once said that owning a local TV station is like having a license to steal. But the real license to broadcast calls for the people to be informed. People, isn't it time to revoke the license?" (Read more)