The local NBC affiliate continues to amuse with its newscasts.
Sunday night was just the latest example, a laughable moment I caught only at the behest of my wife, who was watching for the weather.
I keep telling her just jump on the computer and call up weather.com, or accuweather.com and get their take on things. They’re more accurate and don’t deal in weather porn. Our local people have predicted about 80 of the last three major snowstorms.
But the wife is a traditionalist, who for her efforts gets such bon mots as the local weather babe horrifying us a few weeks back with predictions of minus-25 degree temperatures. Not windchill, but actual temperatures, she stressed.
I wrote of this at the time, noting it would have been record cold and, not surprisingly, we came nowhere close.
Back to Sunday night: A fire had burned a house or houses in Johnstown and a report was given.
The anchor, who prides himself on being a hometown product according to his various internet presences, apparently never paid attention while driving through the Kernville section of Johnstown. I think I’m safe in presuming he never resided in that neighborhood.
Regardless, my wife watched the fire report and asked me if I’d ever heard of Dilbert Street in Johnstown.
Well, I told her, there is a Gilbert Street in Brownstown.
No, that couldn’t be it, she said, because the fire was in Johnstown and video seemed to show the elevated Rt. 56 expressway in the background.
Through the magic of satellite television, she was able to rewind so I could watch. Yes, the guy said Dilbert, as in the comic strip, which the local newspaper runs.
No, the fire wasn’t on Dilbert Street.
But where was it? I watched the report, walked to my desktop computer and did some quick research – something our journalist anchor didn’t have time to do, obviously.
You’d think a guy who had grown up here might have thought to himself, Dilbert Street, never heard of it.
I’m another homegrown guy, one who went the extra mile and determined it was Dibert Street.
No big deal, you might say.
I’d say you are wrong.
If you can’t trust media to get basic, indisputable facts correct, it’s a problem. It’s an even bigger problem if media members need to exercise judgment in weeding out the truth and presenting you with accurate information.
If they just repeat what they’re told or read on a teleprompter with their brain in neutral, it’s a problem.
If they have no sense of journalistic curiosity, if they don’t double-check facts, again it’s a problem.
This sort of laziness is part of the reason a Reuters Institute report in June of 2021 found that just 29 percent of the American public trusts the media, a low among 46 countries surveyed worldwide.
I found that statistic by doing a brief internet search, something our “Dilbert” anchor might try sometime.
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