Apparently The Cameras Turned on Them

The first thing I heard this morning when I woke up was the sound of a familiar voice. It was Michelle Valles, on the radio with the morning crew at KLAQ.

When I was at KTSM NewsChannel 9, Michelle "Vata" Valles walked in the door one afternoon as a deer-in-the-headlights graduate of UT Austin, looking for a TV gig. She found it, made her way to the main anchor desk and eventually spread her wings back towards Austin, where she is the primetime news anchor for their NBC affiliate, KXAN. This morning she was talking about the South By Southwest tour, an annual event in Austin that is as much to music lovers as a Baptist revival is to Billy Graham. But somewhere the conversation turned, and the topic focused on the "poor judgment" of two local television news stations. Covering the story of a traffic death (in TV we called this a "fatal") that had happened the night before near a legal drag strip, the two news crews - one from the CBS affiliate KDBC Channel 4, the other KVIA Channel 7 - caved to the urging of the crowd to race down the strip themselves. To see it for yourself, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioHh4a5C-9g

Now really...this is some funny shit. Having spent some time in TV myself, I can tell you that stuff like this goes on ALL THE TIME in news rooms, and those involved certainly don't have any intention - or wish - of seeing it in the headlines. This, unfortunately, is on the lips of Anderson Cooper, CNN, and - as the above link can attest - You Tube. Did they make a bad decision? Hell yeah, they did. Those live trucks cost a fortune - probably in the neighborhood of half a million bucks. News Directors in El Paso reluctantly hand over the keys to operators that are often not even of legal drinking age, but they are trusted. Now there's a word you haven't read or heard in any news story related to this sad but funny incident.

So that's the story: This situation is really not about a poor judgment call by two news crews to haul ass down a short strip of pavement; this is about a violation of trust that can never be replaced. According to the newspaper this morning, the guy driving the KDBC truck has been fired, so he REALLY won't ever have the chance to redeem himself. Rick Cabrera, the guy in the Channel 7 live truck, was the heir-apparent for outgoing local news legend Gary Warner. Now both KDBC and KVIA managment are on full-time damage control, and each station will now have the unfortunate task of earning back their reputation among viewers (and their fellow media colleagues) as being the leader in covering the news, instead of being the story that's covered.

Gee, I wonder where KTSM was that night? To me, the video posted all over the web looked too good to have come from a cell phone. No, it looked professional. Hmmmm....