Tuesday, June 22, 2010

WTNH statement on Desiree Fontaine

Says WTNH on Tuesday:
"Desiree Fontaine is currently out on personal leave. Steve Parker will be hosting Connecticut Style and Tom Michaels will be covering Traffic on a temporary basis while Ms. Fontaine is attending to personal matters."

Unlike the anonymous comment-leavers on various sites, we're going to steer clear of the chippy comments. She's innocent until proven guilty. Fontaine and the 12:30 show don't fit my tastes in TV news, but that has nothing to do with the allegation of shoplifting.
I'm more concerned about the plunging state of journalism as exemplified by certain cable and radio hosts who bias every story toward their viewpoint AND by the WTIC-TV traffic and features personality whose dopey ad for a car dealership runs DURING her station's newscast.

In response to the reader's question below: I work in a features department so I appreciate the value of softer stories that illuminate our world. But my tastes in TV news run toward hard news, in-depth features that don't have a commercial tie-in (an advertiser) and the kind of journalism that tries to give both sides of an issue. I think local stations can depend too much on crime news because it's cheap and quick (although I know the pressures of budgets on news, certainly, working at a JRC paper). So there has to be a mix. I'm not even sure "Connecticut Style" is under the banner of news, but it looks VERY commercial. If the 12:30 half-hour at WTNH is a worthy lifestyle show, then it's something other than news and shouldn't include main news anchor Sonia Baghdady. When the lines are continually blurred between sales, news and (on the cable channels) political partisanship, everyone suffers. Society suffers. Just my view...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What actually fits your taste in TV News? (just curious)