Sometimes your 'peers' are just embarrassing

This has been one crazy week, and not crazy in a good way.

Even though life goes on, it still can be a little tricky to just keep on truckin’ after something like the Boston bombing, or the Texas explosion, and it can be a challenge to try being funny. Of course, it’s a challenge every week for me to try being funny, or at least mildly amusing.

What’s happening in Boston sounds like something out of a TV crime show or a movie, but I think it might have been hard to sell it as a Hollywood script.

As the situation developed Thursday night, it really began to sound like a script — a botched robbery by the suspects who are two brothers, a gunfight, chase, one of the brothers gets killed and the other escapes and launches a massive door-to-door manhunt. At this writing, the ending still is unresolved, although if I were betting I wouldn’t wager on the fugitive brother being taken alive. If it were a movie, his being captured alive would be the twist.

I wrote earlier this week about how the 24/7 news channels tripped over each other and everyone else trying to be the first to report the latest “news,” which at that point turned out to be mostly wrong, then followed it with hour after hour of rampant speculation. So far, most of that speculation has proven to be — wrong.

What’s going on now (Friday) with the manhunt hit a couple of my other pet peeves with the TV celebrities ... uh, I mean TV journalists.

First, why do the network anchors feel they have to be standing in the street at Boston, or wherever the story is, to do their talking head routines? Wolf Blitzer describes the scene at the Boston airport as he arrived, but why is he there in the first place? Then, Anderson Cooper arrives and does a standup in a street. Why? Can’t the network reporters handle the job? Since when do TV anchors have to get out of the studio and go to the scene? Is that supposed to make what comes out of their mouths more credible? If so, it doesn’t work with me.

Of course, it was kind of sad that while all eyes and cameras were on Boston, Matt Lauer was standing in the remains of the exploded Texas fertilizer plant, looking forlorn and basically being overlooked. Well, maybe it wasn’t that sad after all because, once more, what could Matt Lauer do there that the NBC reporters couldn’t do other than hog camera time?

My other peeve with the TV folks showed up when an uncle of the suspects came out of his house to talk to the press. It was like throwing a bone in front of a pack of wild dogs. Everybody was talking over one another, interrupting the poor guy, even arguing with him. Is that really necessary? Do they have to act like a mob when the guy’s trying to talk to them and answer their questions? I’ve had experience with that feeding frenzy atmosphere.

It was 28 years ago this week when the Covenant, the Sword and Arm of the Lord compound was raided in Marion County. We had reporters from all over the country here, and lots of TV folks, several of whom just dropped in briefly then took off.

There was a bit of verbally running over one another at press conferences, and a little shouting once or twice. Then, they kept asking the same questions over and over, even when they got answers. Or, at least, all the answers they were going to get at the moment. They might rephrase their questions, or come at them from a different angle, but they still kept hammering the officials with the same thing over and over, trying to trick them and never getting anything different. (It’s hard to trip up someone who’s used to doing the interrogating, anyway.)

OK, that’s probably enough ranting for now. It’s just that sometimes what others in this business do aggravate and embarrass me. With the CSA siege, we little ol’ country reporters managed to get the stories, and sometimes even a little more, just being civil.

Granted, that was nearly three decades ago and things have changed a lot since then, but I still don’t like the feeding frenzy approach, or talking heads who keep talking with nothing new to say.

And since I’m about out of something to say, I guess I’ll stop my rant and just call it a day. Man, that feels better.