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No room for leading cheers in TV news
Paul Sassone
Updated: October 31, 2012 5:02PM
There is much that is annoying about local TV news:
• Timidity disguised as balance that reduces political coverage to mere he said/she said;
• Huge chunks of time wasted on the weather;
• Inane banter and the seeming necessity for anchors to comment on every story they read;
• The inability to pronounce English, so that the word “tour’’ becomes “tore’’ and “field’’ becomes “filled,’’ for instance.
I could go on. But I’ll just mention one thing more.
Local TV news also assumes all viewers live in Chicago. I, as a suburbanite, find this annoying.
For months, a major item on newscasts is that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has persuaded another business to relocate in Chicago. Often, these businesses are moving from a suburb to the city.
Just the other day I heard on the news that Nokia was relocating to Chicago from Itasca and bringing 150 employees. And there have been several other such instances – Motorola moving to Chicago from Libertyville with 3,000 employees is a major example.
Of course, TV news should report these happenings. They are news and important.
What I object to is that each such story is presented overtly as cause for celebration.
As a suburban resident, I don’t see such moves as a reason to rejoice. A suburban business moving to Chicago is not a cause for rejoicing for the suburb losing that business, losing that tax revenue, losing the local business that the moving business generates. And it may not be cause for rejoicing for the employees who now must go to work in Chicago.
I don’t hear much about that on the news.
But I also don’t know why I should celebrate a job transference that doesn’t result in any new jobs.
If a business with 1,000 employees moves from one location to another, that doesn’t give a job to a single unemployed person.
I don’t see this mentioned on TV news. Maybe I just missed it.
Job creation is a lot more important than job transference. During this latest election campaign, businesses and business support groups have taken to calling themselves job creators.
If job creator is now a synonym for a business, then we all should be looking hard at whether jobs are being created and who is creating them.
TV news confuses the issue by giving the impression, if nothing else, that job transfers are additional jobs.
So, TV newsies, just report. Stop throwing on-air parties when suburbs take it in the neck.
