On December 20, Channel One news anchors told the students that they would not be reporting on any news stories until January 3. That is a 15-day holiday for the crack news team at Channel One.
Unfortunately for Channel One’s anchors and producers, the news doesn’t take a two-week break.
On Christmas Day, the earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean.
Channel One is fond of saying they are the only source of news for many young people, but Channel One chose not to web-stream a newscast about this story on their web site (channelone.com). Instead they did as they always do when they close down the newsroom for holidays, weekends, and the entire summer, they cut-and-pasted Associated Press articles about the disaster. A well-trained monkey could cut and paste other people’s articles.
Jim Morris is the news producer at Channel One and he appears to take his job less and less seriously. He could be having an around-the-clock newscast on the Channel One web site to update the stale news stories on the in-school show, but either he doesn’t want to work harder or his bosses won’t let him because it would cost too much.
Channel One did throw students a bone. They posted a set of pictures of Seth Doane, one of their remaining anchors, in one of the devastated counties and some words to accompany the pictures. This came just a few days ago, way after young people got much better information from real news organizations.
Obligation’s Jim Metrock said, “The hapless yokels at Channel One News bungled this huge news story. They do this all the time with smaller stories. They write their scripts in the evening and tape their show and send it out at midnight and they only do that five times a week. And they don’t even do that 12 weeks of the year. If you are going to promote yourself as the ‘only source of news for students’, you need to work up a little sweat doing it. Channel One News is a joke. Unfortunately, the joke is on the students who are forced to watch the show and the taxpayers who are getting fleeced.”
On today’s show, Channel One tries to quickly catch everyone up on what has happened in the world over the last two weeks. The Channel One anchor, Melissa, tries to shift the focus from Channel One to the students. She says, “See guys, you’re gone for a few days and look at everything that’s happened.”
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[AIRDATE=1/03/05]
[PRO=ENAS]
[TALENT=MELISSA]
MELISSA: SEE GUYS, YOU’RE GONE FOR A FEW DAYS AND LOOK AT EVERYTHING THAT’S HAPPENED. WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK WITH MORE AFTER THIS BREAK.
Excuse us, Melissa, but it’s you who disappeared for two weeks. This script should have read: “We apologize to those students who depend on Channel One News to keep them up-to-date on current events. We dropped the ball and we know it. We failed you simply so we could enjoy a two-week vacation.”
