Former NBC and CBS News correspondent Ed Rabel wrote in a 2013 Charleston (WV) Gazette opinion piece that the people in local TV news are “bubble-heads and glib, young, sometimes pretty know-nothings” who “wouldn’t know a news story if it slapped them in the face.”
Station owners and managers forbid their news departments from stepping on toes and ruffling feathers, out of fear that such stories might insult local advertisers or offend politicians on whose toes reporters might stomp. And investigative or original reporting is costly, meaning real reporters must be hired to do real reporting, a job that requires lots of time and money that the stations have no time for.
Sixteen months after his op-ed was published, Rabel announced he was running for Congress as an independent in West Virginia’s second Congressional District. WCHS-TVnews director Matt Snyder apparently wasn’t ready to forgive Rabel for his TV news criticism, and ordered his staff to ignore the former journalist’s campaign, according to the Morgan County USA website.
By Susie Madrak
— August 16, 2014
