"Thanks for that great reporting, Tom."

[Stinky The Clown]

Or Dick.

Or Harriett.




It really grabs me when some "reporter" gets on teevee and reads a written press release from some press agent or spokesperson and the teevee host thanks the crack reporter for his or her "good reporting".




Self-congratulatory, circle-jerking, assholes ......

[Occam Bandage]

1. Fast-food restaurants call their own food "delicious," "satisfying," "tasty," and "quality"

on the packaging and on the posters in the store. Same thing.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. I recall, back in my schoolboy daze, taking (I think) an advertising or marketing class ......

... and there was a concept called "puffery" that protected advertisers from being sued for being full of shit. The law allowed for a degree of puffery to be protcted.

Wiki has a good treatise on the concept, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

>snip<
Examples

For instance, a diner advertisement promoting the "world's best cup of coffee" would classify as puffery. That claim would be almost impossible to substantiate, and no reasonable consumer would take such exaggeration at face value. Puffery often uses the superlative form of a word, like "best" or "greatest".

Puffery might also exaggerate the advertised effects of a product. An example is the following Burma-Shave jingle:

We've made / Grandpa / Look so trim / The local / Draft board's after him / Burma-Shave
>snip<



Nooz ain't s'posed to be puffed.

[Occam Bandage]

5. Oh, I see the problem.

You accidentally forgot that you were watching a packaged product for mass consumption, and not the news. I make that mistake all the time, too!

[eleny]

2. And don't get me started on the blaming of the meteorologist for bad weather

[blm]

4. so with you on the distaste for their newsreading in place of reporting sham.

.

[Spike89]

6. Television is a poor medium for news

It always has been, corporate ownership highlights it, but the problem has always been there. There is too little depth and too much need to "shout" to maintain interest. It does have some advantages, but they are extremely rare and have been smothered by the cable news cycle. Actual footage of news (not typical press events) is of course almost impossible to get, but when they are able to get cameras on scene, it can be very compelling (long-event catastophe's such as floods, eruptions, even drought) but for things like an explosion, car wreck, etc. the best they can do is show the aftermath and really, a photo works as well for that usually.

Anyone that really relies on television for news needs to stop complaining, the crap they serve was designed for you. If you want to be informed, check out a paper, magazine, the Internet, or even a few good radio stations.