Hey, I got our local FOX affiliate to blink (KC)

[Neecy]

Saturday night, I was watching the local FOX affiliate in Kansas City (ch. 4), and they did a very brief blurb on the international war protests - London, Rome, Madrid - but said absolutely nothing about the many demos that had taken place in our own country on Saturday. Then they followed this brief blurb with yet ANOTHER lengthy American Idol fluff piece.

I wrote an email to them complaining about the lack of coverage of the domestic protests, instead choosing to run another ridiculous promo piece for American Idol disguised as 'news'. I asked them to tell the truth, and not just what Murdoch wanted us to see, by covering the many Americans who disagree with this war; and if any true 'journalists' exist in their newsroom.

I just received a reply - and an acknowledgement that they should have, indeed, covered the domestic protests. We really need to be watching and letting them know when they attempt to hide the truth. (They did, to their credit, cover the Sunday KC protests in a fairly lengthy piece, although they estimated the crowd at 200 when it was clearly double that).

Denise,
The European protests were much larger in scale and encompassed several countries.
The U.S. protests were small by comparison but, I agree, deserving of a mention in our newscast.
The American Idol story to which you refer was actually a story on entertainment mogul Robert Sillerman buying Fremantle, the production company that produces "American Idol".
Our news editorial decisions are made locally by local people. We receive no direction or input on news from our parent company.
Thanks for taking the time to write and thanks for watching FOX 4 News.

Bryan McGruder
V.P., News
WDAF-TV

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Talk is cheap, betcha they don't change their BEHAVIOR one bit!

[deadparrot]

2. Glad to know that the St. Louis Fox affiliate

isn't the only one to hawk their own programming (ie, America Idol) ad nauseam. It's only gotten worse since Ozzie Smith's kid has been in it.

How about some real news, folks?

[xmas74]

3. Good for you!