TV News

Today’s entry deals with ambush reporting, which because of the technology involved, is a tactic only used by electronic news media. I learned in a seminar at the National Judicial College some years ago that one of the most loathsome things that can be done to someone is to have a so called “investigative reporter” from a television outlet along with a camera crew catch you at your front door or in the parking lot or some place else where they are not expected and then hit you with a bunch of nasty, one sided questions.

The victim of this particular form of torture is in a no-win situation, because a malevolent video editor can edit the tape to make the victim look bad, no matter what the victim does or does not do, no matter what the victim says or does not say. A fifteen minute interview can be edited down to a fifteen second soundbite, which will be visually appealing and probably glaringly inaccurate. All that the viewing public will retain from the interview will be a negative image of the subject of the interview.

In the seminar I saw a great example of how this works. A television channel is having a slow news day, so they send a reporter along with a camera crew to catch a judge leaving the courthouse early. The judge is peppered with impertinent, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” sort of questions.

In the video that I saw, the reporter and camera crew catch a judge leaving the courthouse early to take his wife to chemotherapy. The editor of the videotape made it appear as if the judge looked guilty of something. Fortunately for the judge, the television report was so distorted that the television channel was forced to issue a retraction and discipline the reporter involved. The judge was lucky.

A number of years ago I had a high profile guardianship case in my court. The lawyer for the proposed ward exercised his prerogative to have the courtroom closed, which is something that the Texas Probate Code allows in guardianship cases. A television reporter there to cover the story was quite displeased with being shown the door and demanded an immediate interview with me to see why I was trampling on the public’s “right to know.”

Realizing that she just wanted to make me to look bad on camera, so she would have something to run for the evening news, I had my bailiff hand her a photocopied portion of the Texas Probate Code that authorized a closed hearing.

The hearing went on for over four hours, so by the time that it was over, she had missed her deadline. I never heard from her again, mercifully.

As the old saying goes, “Its better to be lucky than smart.”