Sunday, December 16, 2012

KGO Radio uses actualities from Connecticut School Shooting for Promos

Not 48 hours after the horrifying events in the small Connecticut elementary school, KGO Radio began running promos for its news coverage using actualities from the tragedy.

I'm not surprised.

If there's been any other media malfeasance here, I haven't heard nor seen--let me know.

You would think that someone with a quarter brain would say that this terrible affair, this mother of all massacres would be off limits for TV and radio outlets to promote their product. After all, it's not every day that twenty little kids and eight adults get shot to death. Not your run-of-the-mill mall or theatre shooting; this one involved an elementary school-- almost all of the victims were under ten years of age.

That didn't stop KGO.

Like I said, I'm not surprised. Are you?

*Follow me on Twitter

15 comments:

  1. Sadly, no. There are no ethical or moral limits in the media anymore. In their rush to be first with the story, the national news media outlets reported many "facts" that turned out not to be true and spent much of their coverage backtracking. These nistakes included identifying the shooter's brother as the shooter, reporting the mother was a teacher at the school, and many other details that turned out not to be true. The news used to be the place we could turn to get objective and accurate reporting. Now they don't seem to know any more than we do and add to the drama and hysteria of the stories they're covering. Very sad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm surprised you are censoring comments critical of your show last night. Man up baby!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The critical comments aimed at Rich for last night's disastrous show must be huge. Not even his usual over the top ”boosters” have given him kudos today. Even they recognize how bad it was!!!

      Delete
    2. Ain't that the truth! Your advice to "man up baby!" is spot on for Rich. I tried to post comments offering constructive criticism both last night and last weekend, but Rich censored them. Not just you and me, but those of others as well. Long-time radio talk veteran Len Tillem's suggestions made to Rich on air last night were summarily dismissed. "I don't need callers" is Rich's constant refrain. He keeps talking over guests, too and doesn't complete a single sentence when he builds up his clumsily phrased questions. Keep up with that attitude and you won't have any listeners, too. He can dish it out far better than he can take it. In fairness, Rich is getting better and his program wasn't besieged by "gremlins" last night. He still has a long way to go, however.

      Delete
  3. You know - it's events such as this shooting that KGO really served the public as kind of a large group therapy session - when they had daily talk shows.
    Up here in Oregon, the only local talk was the right-winger talking about the need for guns in schools and malls or a surprisingly strong effort by one of the local sports talk stations, where callers and hosts actually talked about dealing with this on an emotional level.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Are you really surprised? You have someone like Pizatti running that group of radio stations into the ground. There's talk that Pizatti will be the next lamb to the slaughter. His salary is huge and with new folks at the top... Chances are he will be gone in Q1 of 2013. Not to mention that he thinks he can run a major market cluster. Cumulus was the laughing stock at the STAR Party Thursday night because Pizatti wouldn't let his sales people go. In doing so, no one from Cumulus had any interaction with the major advertisers in the market. And this comes at a time when advertisers are placing their annual business. Maybe exploiting the murder of children will boost KGO's ratings at Christmas time so the ratings will soar and Pizatti's sales staff won't need to smooze advertisers in order to get business.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rich, you are using this "terrible affair" to hype comments on your blog. You are far to eager to criticize everyone else and oblivious to your blatant hypocrisy.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm not exactly sure why KGO isn't supposed to promote the fact that it covered one of the major stories of the year in a big way. By the way we have the rights to use all ABC, Cumulus and AP audio for promotional use.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Having managed radio station news departments and newspapers for more than two decades, all I can say about KGO "News" is unprofessional. From the board operators to canned story selections, KGO will never come close to KCBS, which is piss-poor, in my opinion, too. The Bay Area has little quality media.

    Look at the downfall of The Merc. Look at its "owner," Dean "Let me exploit journalists, hire mostly newbies who cannot spell and I'll still run the newspapers into bankruptcy" Singleton.

    Look at The Chron: running tabloid crap at the top of the page.

    And the list goes on because so many other newspapers are Singleton-owned, although he is really no longe the owner. He is a scourge to any print newspaper and having worked at one of his lowly POS (pice of ****) newspapers, I can tell you: his employees hate his guts, unless they are kissing his ass.

    So, no, I'm not surprised that KGO would do that. Look at the low quality of media in the Bay Area. Nothing should surprise you.

    And I didn't even get started on the TV "news"casts that dish out "we're here to keep you informed" donkey crap. No, you are there to make money. Good journalism is secondary.

    Al Jazeera is my choice, along with The Guardian, der Spiegel International, St. Petersburg Times, etc., etc., etc.

    Lastly, the trolls will say, "but you're missing 'local' news."

    Really? I already know people are shot and killed and knifed in Oakland, San Jose, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, etc. Those are the lede stories. Those are the stories that receive helicopter flyovers for aerial shots.

    Real news like what's happening at city councils, boards of supervisors, etc. do receive some attention, but if you think TV, radio and newspapers cover Bay Area city government, then you are sadly mistaken.

    I've bene to some city council meetings in the South Bay where there have been NO reporters at all from any medium.

    Bay Area media may have its hall of fame; but its present condition will result in a hall of shame.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Don't interpret this as either a defense of KGO or a slam. I rarely if ever listen anymore, so I ask out of ignorance. Why were they promoting their coverage of the shootings? I assume they did not happen to have one of their reporters on the scene, which is a not unprecedented coincidence. Did they in some way make superior use of local recourses and sources? Did they find some compelling and relevant local angle, and develop it in context of the changing reports from CT? Or did they just put a lot of scary crap from their feeds on the air for a while? Honest question.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Unfortunately, much of what is said in the above post is true.
    The media is now always in a 'hurry-up' mode to make sure that they don't get 'beaten by the competition' that they fall prey to the kind of mistakes that sadly characterized much of the amateur coverage of the horrific event in Connecticut. This has become especially true since the irresponsible and sometimes unreliable social media gets involved in the equation.

    Anoter disturbing developement: listening and reading some of the new people who are now working in the print and electronic media, one notices many of the 'reporters' seem more interested in becoming 'stars,' and getting their faces on the internet or TV than they are in being true journalists.

    What the above poster also said about Dean Singleton and his ilk is also spot on. Newspapers and radio stations have lowered their standards and are now hiring minor league talent. The 'minor leagues' meanwhile (smaller markets) are not producing the kind of future big market
    talent that they used to, because most of them have been absorbed by bloodless companies run by bean counters who are more worried about the 'bottom line' and what the shareholders might say. What about serving the public? Forget it!

    Just another reason why we need to be more vigilant and press for more media regulation so that we can at least have a modest amount of diversity.

    And this nonsense that you hear spouted by conservatives about the 'liberal media?' PLEASE! The media for the most part is being run by huge corporations who are NOT liberal and are not interested in promoting journalism or free expression if it conflicts with their bottom line philosophy.

    ReplyDelete
  10. "it's not every day that twenty little kids and eight adults get shot to death. Not your run-of-the-mill mall or theatre shooting; this one involved an elementary school-- almost all of the victims were under ten years of age."
    but your first reaction Rich was I'm not surprised.... REALLY?!
    what does it take to surprise you? wait, don't answer, I really don't want to know

    ReplyDelete
  11. Maybe if you actually knew something about radio or paid attention, you'd know this has been done for years by most media outlets back to 9/11 and earlier. From what I hear it was about local reaction at local schools and on Ron's show - not self-promotion. Any story as big as this will have news outlets run "promos" around it - whether it be CNN, Fox, WCBS, KCBS, or KGO. Sounds like your hate for KGO will have you slam them no matter what they do

    ReplyDelete
  12. That's the media, making money off the dead and suffering for over 50 years and proud of it!

    ReplyDelete