The Chickification of the News

That title was coined by Rush Limbaugh to describe how news reporting has gone from the "just the facts, ma'am" style of the anchors and writers of the past to today's "touchy-feely" news reporting in which every story has to have some sort of emotional angle to it. Rush attributes these changes to the increased numbers of women in anchor, reporting, writing and producing jobs.

There's no better example of this phenomenon than on Prime News on KTLA-5 in Los Angeles. Prime News is their nightly 10pm hourlong newscast that was for decades anchored by Hal Fishman, a no-nonsense newsman who died rather suddenly one year ago today. I watched Hal's broadcast pretty much every night that I was home since the early 80's. He had a dry sense of humor, but didn't tolerate a lot of joking around on the set. His job was news reporting, not entertainment.

During his later years Hal would do commentaries as part of the newscast. They were well thought out, tightly written, and though he sometimes displayed anger or disgust with a situation, were not overwrought. He also did not appear to come from any particular political point of view. You would have been hard-pressed to examine his newscast or his commentaries and figure out who he voted for. He was the objective newsman.

Hal would be sickened by what has become of his Prime News show. It has gone from a reasonably serious news presentation to Gigglefest at 10. This week seems to have been especially bad, with two women anchors, a woman weatherperson, a woman health reporter, women doing sports (the regular sports guy is on vacation) and the only guy on the set being the entertainment reporter (and I'm not too sure about him). Now, I have no problem with serious women in news reporting, but for Pete's sake, the Prime News team can't be serious without being maudlin, and can't move from one story to the next without trying to be funny.

Making things even worse is the decision to allow co-anchor Leila Feinstein to do commentaries. Her stated reason for starting a regular commentary statement was to carry on the legacy of Hal Fishman. He wouldn't be proud of the result.

Her commentaries are a disaster. Instead of a serious commentary on some important issue, she goes out and films a remote somewhere in a style that's more rant than information. Last night's hysteria on gas prices could have been written by a wacky left diarist at DailyKos. Here it is and see if you agree:

Every time I fill up my gas tank I get so disgusted, the only thing that keeps me from going crazy is when I look around and I realize I'm not the only one suffering, we're all having to deal with this.

But actually we're not all suffering. A new report shows that some fat cats are getting a whole lot fatter on the backs of our hard earned gas money.

Exxon Mobil just had it's most profitable quarter ever - in fact it's the biggest quarterly profit that any U.S. company has ever made. Now they claim they're not raking it in by gouging us, saying the record profits "highlight the quality of our integrated business model and disciplined investment approach".

But what exactly are they investing in? We've been hearing for months now that they're using the profits to explore new sources of oil but ah, ah... Now the numbers are out and the truth is revealed.

Turns out oil companies spent less on oil exploration than they did on buying back stocks and paying dividends.

And here's how the profits break down.

Exxon Mobil made $11.7 billion last quarter, that's $130 million a day, $90,000 every minute.

I think it's high time the government step in to put some limits on these obscene profits. Someone's gotta regulate these oil companies, because when they regulate themselves this is what happens.

And if you want to do something about it right now you can join the group oilwatchdog.org and see what consumers are doing to fight back.

What's missing from this in-depth analysis of the oil situation? Balance. She uses the same demagoguery of the oil industry that you expect to hear from Nancy Pelosi and ignores some important facts. For instance, she fails to mention that American oil companies like Exxon do not control the world price of oil. She also fails to mention that the American oil giants made a profit equal to about 4% of revenues while paying taxes equal to about 14% of revenues. And where's the outrage at the amount of gas taxes per gallon that we're currently paying, and the fact that Democrats are considering raising the federal tax once again?

And who gets to decide how much profit is "obsene"? Is there a "right" amount of profit to which all companies must aspire lest they be considered "obsene"? Has the owners of KTLA designed the "right" amount of profit for their corporation?

Where's the outrage about the stonewalling Congressional Democrats are doing to prevent companies like Exxon from creating new sources of American oil? We know that there's plenty of oil right off the California coast, but Congress won't let the oil companies go and get it? How about a little hysteria over that, Leila?

And what's wrong with paying dividends? Dividends are returns on the investments millions of stockholders made by both individuals and various funds. Corporations exist to create profits for their owners - they don't exist as a public service. I would guess that a great many of the people watching this debacle of a commentary piece have retirement funds with investments in the oil industry and aren't too upset that Exxon is paying good dividends.

This wasn't a commentary, it was a lefty rant. It was not worthy of Hal Fishman who she's trying to emulate. I don't think I can watch that show anymore, it's just too aggravating. After more than 25 years it's time to change the channel.

Channel 11, it's your turn. Make me proud.