KPTV’s Pete Ferryman Responds To My Criticisms
Yesterday, I wrote a post criticizing how our own KPTV (Channel 12) labels news from Iraq.
Sadly, the news these days is more often bad than good. Each day seems to bring a new car bomb in another market. And on the very bad days, we learn of another Oregonian who won’t be coming home to happy embraces. Yet on KPTV, “Fight For Iraq” seems to be the label that this news is marked with
But “Good Day Oregon” co-anchor Pete Ferryman wrote me just a little while ago to provide a clarification on how his station and broadcast labels these events.
“As for the “Fight for Iraq” and “War on Terror” issue, I understand your concern about semantics,” Pete writes. “But I do want to clarify something.
“We’ve never referred to Iraq under our ‘War on Terror’ branding, only the fighting in Afghanistan and other stories dealing with terrorist-related activities,” Pete emphasizes.
And I don’t see the point about ‘Fight for Iraq,’ ” he adds..” It’s pretty clear that all parties involved are fighting for control in that country. I don’t believe we’re editorializing by simply stating that a fight for control there is occuring.”
Pete, thanks for reading, and for responding.
Still, it induces cringes when our occupation is branded like shampoo or a movie. Sure, ‘Fight for Iraq’ is better than ‘War on Terror’, but the graphic sheen takes it to ‘WINTER BLAST 2007!’ levels.
Pete seems like an affable guy, but maybe he should answer questions (on behalf of the station) about FOX12’s dive into tabloid news. This has been detailed at times on this blog, Oregon Media Insiders and Blogtown, and yet we only get feeble attempts to defend the current state of American Idol/Astronaut diapers/meth scare ‘news’ filler.
All media, especially Fox 12, needs to give viewers a little more credit. Their daytime TV lineup is embarrassing in its vapidness, and the news content only dovetails it. I realize we can change the station, but it’s our airwaves and we deserve better local content.