PressEthic

The rains of the past week have caused serious flooding all over New Jersey. So why did “Today Show” correspondent Michelle Kosinski feel the need to stage a live shot? Instead of finding a town that had been completely flooded in order to make her point, she went to Wayne, NJ, which – unfortunately for her – had only been partially flooded. That didn’t stop her, though, since she got in a canoe anyway, and paddled herself out in front of the camera. It probably would have worked too, if two guys in hip waders hadn’t walked into the live shot and demonstrated that the water barely reached their ankles. (This link also contains a video of the incident.)

Now, this was hilarious to watch – especially since Kosinski didn’t even stop talking. She pretended those two guys weren’t even there. But you’d think that news outlets would have learned their lesson about staging “news” like this. There were dozens of towns in New Jersey that were completely flooded. Why didn’t the “Today Show” go to one of those towns? I have no idea. It seems like a completely stupid stunt to pull, when they had other options – and even if they couldn’t find someplace where they could canoe down Main Street, why not show footage of the residents boating themselves home? I know I saw a lot of that over the week during nightly news shows. Was the effect of having their own correspondent be “intrepid” worth the hit that the media has taken in the eyes of the public?

And to top it all off, the show was going to air a segment on Bush’s recent staging of a “spontaneous” Q&A with the troops (serious news), right after this segment about the flooding. Gee, I wonder how many people took them seriously. I didn’t really like the “Today Show” to begin with – most of their segments are inane, and I find the hosts, with the exception of Al Roker, completely annoying. But this has increased my distaste for the show immensely. I couldn’t care less what their ratings are – what I care about is how many people are going, “I guess this proves once again that you can’t trust the media.”

You have to wonder if those two guys in hip waders saw Kosinski making a fool of herself in about four inches of water and deliberately went sloshing through her shot.