Oh, boo hoo...
grant said:
The police / politicians need to keep the media on-side here because once they turn on them, they can be quite a pain in the rear end.
grant,
I've got a hot tip for you... the media's already turned on them - did quite a while ago.
I'm always surprised at these agencies that bend over backwards, after encrypting their systems, to now provide radios - either through a lease or purchase agreement - to the media outlets.
***
grant said:
In fact I heard the news media in recent weeks actually asking TV viewers / radio listeners to phone in tipoffs about anything strange happening in their local area.
It must be just me, and I admit that I am going back a ways here, but I recall a time when the media had to WORK to gather its news...not be spoon fed it like they are now by monitoring a scanner ("...Police Sources say that..."), calling the dispatch center or firehouse to see if they could pull some details out of the person on the other end, and slapping a story together based on that. What's gone wrong in the media world? Is it these "breaking news" paging services? It's shameful how the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality has taken over local television news reportage. An example would be a one alarm fire in the middle of nowhere, Brooklyn. While it might and maybe should well be on the front page of the local weekly paper, an incident like that is now worthy of having five local TV news helicopters flying over it for three news segments. Why, I ask? In less then 24 hours that fire will be forgotten about by the vast majority of viewers.
Maybe, just maybe, this move to "encryption" might just force the media types to have to work a little harder at putting together news stories. If it means returning to the days of the streets being covered with foot reporters and cameramen (men like AZScanner above), then so be it. And NO, I'm not talking about buying people's cell phone vidoes - as an avid TV news watcher - the 5 o'clock, 5:30, 6, 6:30, 10, and 11 o'clock (which is part of the problem, FYI) editions - with the local 24 hour network sprinkled in in between - I find that most tipster provided videos generally suck.
I'll close with this. I remember a time when the news was put together with an eye toward doing the greater good. Keeping the honest honest and bring shame to those
who deserve it. I don't know what it's like Down Under, but those days seem to be gone around here. Here's what passes for news today: a cute anchor (something that I do appreciate, admittedly), and filling the hour with enough fluff, the weather over and over (despite the fact that there is an entire network devoted to it), and the last third of the broadcast covering sports (again, despite that fact that there are mutliple networks devoted to that); we are living in an age of "having our bread and circuses" and sadly the news has become one of the circuses. Here's how pathetic is gotten... Here in New York City a scandal recently broke where the city council members used their "discretionary" funds to give grants to organizations that either didn't exist or who used the funds to funnel money back to the councilperson's campaign treasury, among other assorted improprieties. The practice has been going on - according to some reports - since
1988!. Imagine if a reporter was sitting in on the budget hearings and started to research whether or not a "Coalition for a Strong Special Education" actually existed or not. This story could have broke over a decade ago. Is the press going to keep hammering at this story to see if the budget reforms promised are going to actually be implemented? Are they going to follow-up to see if the reforms actually helped? Probably not. We've got reporters and news vans chasing around after cars that jumped a curb somewhere, where as I said above, aside from the poor victims in the car after it struck a building, who now have to recover, - in less then a day - that story won't matter to anyone else... the sidewalk will be reopened and pedestrians will be walking up and down it again as if nothing's happened.
SCANdal