From Jim Metrock:
Oh, the lazy people at Channel One News. One of the biggest stories
of the year and they are asleep at the wheel AGAIN. This morning,
I received an email from Ken McNatt, college student and fearless
Channel One fighter from PA. Ken pointed out that several hours
after the entire world has found out about the capture of Saddam
Hussein that Channel One’s "news" web site didn’t have
any mention of it.
I checked it out. Sure enough, Channel One News was as dead as
a doornail as the world was spinning with big news.
For those of you who know how sloppy Channel One News is, this
is no surprise. Channel One often bills itself as the "ONLY
source of news for teens." Yet Channel One refuses to cover
stories on the weekend and after school hours. Their official
web site could
be used to stream video of Channel One anchors covering news stories
at all hours, but that would cost big money and the kids aren’t worth
it (we guess).
Later in the morning, Channel One indeed posted information about
Saddam’s capture. Channel One’s webmaster cut and pasted a story
from the AP wire service. That was it. No joke. Channel One’s approach
to the news can be described in one word: LAZY. Never, ever confuse
Channel One News with a news organization. Were any Channel One
reporters called in to report the news from Iraq to teens and
preteens who
visited their web site? No. They all apparently got to sleep in
late today. We wouldn’t want to wake up Janet Choi or Derrick
Shore. They
probably partied too long on Saturday night.
Channel One also has the capability to stream audio of their reporters
if they didn’t want the expense of video, but they don’t even do
that. Oh, the have the resources to stream rock and rap music for
teens, especially when they are promoting certain music acts, but
they won’t do it for breaking news stories.
How in the world could Channel One News blow such a big story?
It’s harder than you think. You have to really work at it to
mess up this
badly. If you ever hear a teen say that Channel One News is their
main source or only source of news, then you are probably looking
at a teen that doesn’t know too much about the world. Or either
a teen with a real good sense of humor.
