PressEthic

During this year’s NBC broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade two sisters were injured when a wayward M&M balloon knocked over a street lamp. NBC did not report on this accident at the time. Instead they inserted footage of last year’s M&M balloon crossing the finishing line. They told the audience that they were looking at last year’s footage, but did not reveal why. Instead the announcers Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker, – “kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square,” according to the NYTs

The insertion of the old footage occurred almost instantaneously according to the NYT article.

This must have presented an interesting ethical quandary for NBC producers. Should they have risked tarnishing the festivities with news of the accident?

The NYT report offered this exaplanation from NBC:

Cameron Blanchard, a spokeswoman for NBC's entertainment division, which broadcast the parade, said that the anchors did not deviate much from the script because it was not clear at the time what had happened. "We had been alerted that there had been an incident," she said. "But no further details had been conveyed to us."

Ostensibly this seems like a reasonable explanation. However, the producers must have been aware of the incident to the extent that they were able to cover it up.

I am pleased the announcers revealed to the audience that the footage was old. They would have come in for severe criticism if they had passed off the old footage as ‘live’. This manipulation would have been tantamount to 'photoshoping' a news photograph in a newspaper.

However I feel that the anchors should have provided an explanation for the introduction of the old footage. I am uncomfortable that NBC were so willing to cover up the incident and smile their way through it – without reporting it. Obviously this development was a dampener on a parade designed to be good spirited and jovial, however it did occur. Not recognizing the accident is a manipulation of reality – dangerous territory for an organization that also broadcasts news.