There’s an ongoing discussion about the safety of high speed vehicular pursuits by police. Can we please have a discussion about the creepiness of local TV news broadcasts covering high speed pursuits live via their helicopter cameras? This afternoon around 12:30pm, WFAA-TV Channel 8 broadcast at least forty uninterrupted minutes of police chasing an aggravated assault suspect (with terrified female passenger in tow) through Dallas, Mesquite, and Seagoville.
Luckily, it ended with everyone uninjured and the suspect giving himself up. But after forty minutes of chase footage complete with TV reporters breathlessly describing how SWAT teams might use their guns, the un-climactic climax reinforced how cynical all that air time was: WFAA producers weren’t interested in news value. They wanted to capture crashes, shoot outs, and other “entertainment” live as it happened. (Ironically, what I saw of the chase itself was really boring).
Do I hear a collective “No, duh?” on TV news covering car chases? Well, call me naïve, then. But forty minutes of live chase footage? Can we at least admit there’s something disturbingly porn-y about that?
Why do people by the thousands fill Texas Motor Speedway unless it is in hopes of seeing some horrific crashes–which the drivers will walk away unharmed or at least taken away in an ambulance and later it is announced they were not seriously injured. People live to both try to cheat death (look at the number of dangerous events-mud runs, fighting in cages, drag racing on streets, weaving in and out of Interstate traffic at speed in excess of 80 miles per hour, texting while driving, etc.) and watch others do it. This is what they want to see on TV and the stations are in the business of “the customer is always right” by giving them what it wants to se and they can legally (not too much soft porn but some as well) do.
Some day, they will invent a TV with more than one channel.
The most entertaining aspect of that for me was listening to the anchor (a female, I forget who) continue to describe the event as a “high speed chase” when they were clearly moving through neighborhood streets at about 30-35 mph, even after the helicopter reporter said exactly as much. Like all porn, the script was not believable.
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