Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Trying to grasp......

.....I simply cannot get my arms around this entire tragic, horrific event involving Chris, Nancy, and Daniel Benoit.

There's so much fingerpointing and allegations, and we're what, less than 36 hours from the discovery of the scene? That bothers me. Alot.

Was it heinous to kill your child? YES! Are there any excuses for that? NO!!!

BUT....there is also possibly circumstances involved which do NOT explain or excuse this behavior, but may provide insight into the life going on behind the doors of the Benoit home.

The WWE is getting creamed in the media for putting on a "tribute" show to Benoit last night. They had an appropriate statement at the start of their ECW show tonight which you can also see at WWE.com.

I'm sorry. The bodies are discovered, mid-afternoon, and they have a show to do at 8pm live on USA Network (three hours instead of the usual two, I might add). Apparently not having all the details surrounding the Benoit family, they did what they have done in the past and looked back at his career.

Had they known what we all know now at 4pm Monday, would the show have been different? Probably. But for the Dan Abrams of the world (MSNBC tonight, in for Joe Scarborough) to say, "...while we were getting details here in the newsroom, they are showing a tribute show."

Well, for the 299 million of us NOT in a newsroom, we didn't know. The first report on pwtorch.com, an extremely well run pro wrestling news site which is unbiased in reporting, posted their link to the first AP report regarding the fact it was apparently a murder-suicide at 10:38pm ET, near the END of the show.

The report, found via a provided link to myfoxatlanta.com, was last updated on that site at 1116pm Monday night.

The WWE (and I RARELY defend them) did the best they could with regard to programming with so little time, and, until Benoit, each situation was simply "tragic" in nature, no matter what the reasons may be. Murder never entered the picture.

The move tonight online and on TV was the correct move. No more "tribute", considering all the circumstances. Good call.

But, to Dan Abrams-----YOU are ridiculing the WWE for their "tribute" show, but YOU were the network to air the Virginia Tech killer video???

Now, in fairness, I supported the initial decision to air that; NBC's HUGE mistake was putting their name and logo in the corner of all things VT killer, which, in news terms means, "all my competitors cannot use this material without acknowledging who they received it from".

So, Abrams should check his newsroom before shaking the finger.

After the Tech video scandal, Nightly News ratings have dropped even worse than Katie Couric's.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Great point. The news media seems to have transformed from telling viewers what's going on to how they should feel about what's going on. The proliferation of infotainment is sickening.