Two very unsettling incidents affected Bay Area TV News Crews this (Thursday) morning...
In SF at Pier 14 near the Bay Bridge:
Armed robber approached crews covering last night’s murder.
KTVU robbed of camera. Some of it on TV.
Reporter Kara Liu and photographer Keith Crook were attacked. All are OK.
Also the robber pistol whipped KNTV cameraman Alan
Waples and stole a camera.
He was bleeding on the head and was treated by ambulance techs.
Reporter Kris Sanchez is ok.
KGO Reporter Amy Hollyfield and photographer Stephan Stifter were OK but shaken up by incident.
KRON crew OK too.
Gunman and driver got away.
An ammo clip was left behind on the sidewalk.
*In another incident a KTVU news van rolled on its side out in the Sunol wilderness. The van was en route to cover a grass fire.
Cal fire says no one was hurt in the accident.
*Developing...
Holy Crap!!!!
ReplyDeleteSwanson = Weasel Flesh?
ReplyDeleteHow much meth can you get for one Sony field camera?
ReplyDeleteI will give you an 8ball if it's got the wireless mic rcvr, and a charged battery.
DeleteSachtler Tripod gets you another 8ball.
This wouldn't have happened if Tenenbaum was there. In fact, some of the perps might still be hospitalized. Just like Ali, Henry's a bad man! A baddddd man!
ReplyDeleteLieberman making up his own fake news now.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing about this on the KTVU website.
KTVU is a news station.
If it really happened, they would have reported it and gave a description of the criminal or criminals.
Shame on you Lieberman.
KTVU should sue you formaking up fake news stories about them.
It was one of the first stories I heard when I turned on KCBS this morning!
DeleteAlso, 10:49, check out SF Gate website .... it was there, too.
DeleteCristina Rendon was anchoring the noon news and she mentioned it.
Delete10:49 quit jacking off!
I was watching KTVU and thought it was some sort of FOX News stunt.
Delete10:49 Shut up.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/NBC-Bay-Area-News-Crew-Mugged-Pistol-Whipped-at-San-Francisco-Pier-311452221.html
This story is true Anonymous @10:49 am (or should we call you Lieberman Hater)
ReplyDeleteThe SF Chronicle made it there lead story at 10 am on SFGATE.com
(Not) Surprised you didn't notice that.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/News-crews-robbed-in-S-F-camera-operator-6362833.php
-sincerely,
Bay Area native and fan of Rich Lieberman
Who would read the SFGATE?
Delete10:49, You're a fucking moron. It did happen, and there's tape to prove it. Next time before you shoot your mouth off, just STFU.
ReplyDeleteNo!
DeleteYou shut up!
You better apologize to me for calling me a moron.
Or I will sue you for 1 million dollars.
Um, no, moron. There, I said it again.
DeleteNow go away before I taunt you a second time.
It would be helpful if the some of the stations would issue a statement/email to their own employees. This very serious incident warrants a clear message to staff. Pretty sad I am learning about this on blogs.
ReplyDelete**Pretty sad I'm learning about this on blogs**
DeleteYeah, I'm just a damn blogger--I never break any stories.
Don't be so naive and believe everything you read on the internet.
DeleteThe so called story does not appear on the KTVU website.
So if it isn't there, it probably never happened.
Lieberman is a blogger.
Bloggers are the most untrustworthy people on the net.
My advice, throw away your computer, smart phone and go read a book.
Get some fresh air, volunteer for a charity that needs help.
Be free and start thinking for yourself instead of reading these half wit bloggers and believing everything they say is a fact.
Lieberman will agree with me 100 percent.
Yeah, and that Obama guy was born in Kenya.
DeleteHave a nice day, thanks for the "humor."
@11:49 and all other naysayers:
Deletehttp://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/4147983-181/tv-news-crews-robbed-during
I have photog buddies in New Mexico and Texas. My new mexico buddy says you can conceal-carry in the state--it's up to individual businesses to decide if their employees can carry. (he does; his station has a "don't-ask-don't-tell policy when it comes to sidearms).
ReplyDeleteIn Texas, they now have "Open Carry." Anyone can pack heat w/o even hiding it. He carries a Ruger--and his station knows it.
That's really the only way to protect yourself. Of course, law-abiding criminals won't be carrying one if we ban guns, so we wouldn't need to worry then...LOL!
Delete@10:49: KNTV has it on their website. KCBS has had it on the air all morning. KTVU damn near had it on air live. But I guess they're all making shit up too. STFU, moron.
ReplyDeleteThis is the second time Liu has been attacked. The first at an Oakland murder scene at the Coliseum fleamarket. There was no robbery some itch just beat her up for covering the story. KTVU didn't report it. I don't recall TV stations reporting when they are victims of crime. Really feel bad for Liu. Hope they all will be okay. Aren't they suppised to have security?
ReplyDeleteSpurned boyfriend?
DeleteSomehow I don't think this kind of thing would happen to Stanley Roberts. He's got a certain charisma, if you catch my drift.
ReplyDeleteExcept it did happen to him, in Oakland.
DeleteI would have thought the Pier 14 area was one of the safest in SF. Maybe the bad guys figured that out too and concluded that chances are the cops wouldn't be in the area.
ReplyDelete"Reporter's/Camera people lives Matter"
ReplyDeleteThis is just another example of how this country is slowly sliding into Third World Status. Corruption and greed at the highest levels, and an economically marginalized population.
ReplyDeleteWith the growing number of poor comes a desperation that leads to this kind of behavior. So many kids are lucky to have one functional parent in this country, but think about the millions coming into our world today that are born of mothers that can't either afford them, or don't know how to raise them, and aren't getting any help.
Very sad indeed. And in local news, we love to talk about these tawdry little tragedies because people don't want to be "bored" by the really important news: environmental changes, consolidation of industry, and the growing unrest between the 'haves and the have-nots.'
So yeah, let's have more of what we media types from the TV and radio newsrooms used to refer to as ' Fuzz and wuz,' because that's a lot easier to report and more palatable to the average news-hungry consumer.
(fuz and wuz, better known to us news types as cops and dead bodies),
Unless you know who did it, how do you know these robbers are poor? They could be opportunists in the area and saw a chance for easy money.
DeleteThe Log hears your sarcasm, Anon, but most TV newspeople would say with a straight face that "we" in local news "love to talk about these tawdry little tragedies because [viewers] don't want to be 'bored' by the really important news: environmental changes, consolidation of industry, and the growing unrest between the 'haves and the have-nots.'"
DeleteThe truth is it is not the viewers who demand that "we" in local news fill the newscast with these meaningless, forgettable, affects-nobody-but-the individual-victim stories. It's us: the newspeople (The Log pontificates with the benefit of 3 decades of service). We love the meaningless crime story because--
1. It's easy to spray (never mind that all video of yellow police tape looks the same)
2. The desk gets to put a quick, easy check-mark next to a "story" as "covered" (never mind that in an urban area as large as SF/Oak/SJose, a run-and-gun from the other side of the viewer's own community is irrelevant to him/her--let alone a run-and-gun from across the Bay)
3. Covering "the really important news: environmental changes, consolidation of industry, and the growing unrest between the 'haves and the have-nots'" is hard, requires reporting ability, and calls for an understanding of the times we live in and the many forces that shape them that many of the 20-something producers, reporters and desk folks the stations hire don't have (let's be charitable, and say "don't have yet")--but never mind, because the Assignment Desk culture that rules most TV newsrooms today frankly thinks those stories are boring TV. And besides, the desk is going to steal your reporter and photog anyway at the first sign of any story that can be reported with an anchor-intro that begins, "It's every parent's nightmare..." (and the EP will back them).
The viewers hate those meaningless crime stories. Newspeople would know that if they ever just asked 'em (family and friends don't count, even if they're civilians. They know you, so they're not typical viewers).
The Log knows how seldom "we" in "local news" talk--really talk--with viewers about what we do (c'mon: isn't that the *real* reason god invented newsroom interns--so we wouldn't have to answer the newsroom phone in case the caller is a viewer?). Get outside the news-biz echo-chamber and the creaky, decades-old conventional wisdom of an industry on a fast-track to irrelevance, and you'll find out that viewers want something better (even if they can't describe it with the specificity that Pew, a J-School prof or your "this is what worked in Fort Wayne" consultant prefers).
The proof is in the numbers: your numbers, the ratings for your local newscast. Over the course of the past four decades, the number of viewers for local TV news (not just in the Bay Area, but everywhere in America) have been on a steady dive, and that decline predates cable TV, HBO, PlayStation, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, Twitter and the rest of the internet.
[Continued in next comment box]
[Continued from previous comment box]
DeleteAsk the veterans in your sales department about the worst part of the numbers-rot: we're not just losing total viewers, we're losing the viewers most attractive to advertisers--the most educated, most affluent, most engaged. Ask your [non-TV news business] friends if they watch local TV news. You already know the answer, because if you didn't work in it, you wouldn't watch it, either. Why would you? There's nothing in your typical local newscast that looks remotely like anything in your--or your friends'--lives. Unless, of course, they happen to be a crime victim or suspect (the numbers of which have been decreasing for decades), a dirty cop, a grade-H celebrity, a cute and/or dangerous animal, someone who says something stupid on Twitter, a beauty pageant contestant who says something stupid anywhere, or a citizen or politician with a 19th-century viewpoint on biology, climatology, crime and punishment, race, the significance of the Confederate flag, and the appropriateness of putting to a vote the civil rights of anybody who is not you. Plus Donald Trump.
Is it too late to save local TV news? Yes, if you mean the type of local TV news with which we've been abusing the viewers for the past few decades. In a related story: no one is, or will, mourn it.
But TV isn't going away. Say it with The Log: radio didn't kill the movies, TV didn't kill radio (or the movies), the VCR didn't kill TV (or the movies, or radio), and the internet didn't kill anything (especially not newspapers, which have been attempting suicide since the 1960s and are so determined that they may yet succeed). The relevance of TV news--local and national--in the rest of the 21st century depends on people in the news business--
1. Rethinking news philosophies and storytelling methodologies largely unchanged since Cronkite was knee-high to an anchor desk
2. Realizing that, to riff on the old axiom, "nobody ever hums the set" (or the Doppler, or the video wall, or the Periscope).
3. Understanding that to succeed, your newscast must be essential. That means it has to live in your city, which means the news staff has to get to know the viewers and what they care about (not just reach for what worked in the previous market in which they happened to be hired). Here are 2 freebies:
1. That missing kid? *Not* "every parent's nightmare." *That missing kid's* parent's nightmare. Other parents? Mostly don't care
2. Those teases; that live-shot in which the reporter in the rain/wind/snow shows us that people with no umbrella/jacket/hat get wet/hypothermia/ pneumonia; the "Team Coverage" 4-box; the verb-free, jargon-filled "journalese" you learned from the network, CNN, or that EP who taught you how to "write"--the Millennials see right through them, 'cause they were raised on that crap and they know you're trying to put lipstick on a hamster that you're going to say allegedly, according to sources, might be a pig. GenY is our future, and they think we're idiots, or corrupt, or most likely both. But they haven't completely abandoned TV, mostly because there's no viable replacement--yet (the web may be it someday, but it isn't now). But they're working to find or invent one.
We talk smack about the viewers and what they want at our peril. We should be talking with them--and listening. Mostly listening. Then we should get to work giving them a newscast that looks like it lives where they do.
Back to work (and foam the runway: The Log is headed to the Control Room):
I've been hearing about these news crew muggings too often recently. Maybe they need to hire an armed security guard to travel with them when they go on location.
ReplyDelete