Joe Rozier e-mails:
Paul, to go with your Thanksgiving Media Memo list, how about another one for the day the Darren Wilson (not the Michael Brown) Grand Jury decision is announced? Here are some of my ideas:
- Interrupt regularly scheduled programming to announce that the decision has been made but you don’t know what the decision is or exactly when it will be announced. Be sure to only cut in AFTER the commercials have played and the program is about to start.
- Cut to an on-site reporter so they can say the decision has been made but he/she doesn’t know what the decision is and doesn’t know when the accouncement will be made.
- Cut back to the studio and have the weather person tell you about schools that have closed because of the impending announcement. This has nothing to do with the weather but meteorologists are prone to getting bored unless there is a really bad storm happening.
- Cut back to the anchors so they can confirm a decision has been made but they don’t know what the decision is or when it will be announced.
- Go back to the regularly scheduled programming just in time for the commercials to run.
- Once commercials complete, break back in and go back to step #1 above.
One alternative would be to insert a field reporter on the scene of past protests between steps 2 and 3 so the viewer can see you are covering all of the angles. Maybe a cut to a helicopter view would fit nicely in here somewhere as well.
Be sure to show plenty of the exact same pictures we have seen of Michael Brown and the ONE of Darren Wilson (blurry and smiling) while you are telling your audience that you know absolutely nothing and have nothing else to report.
So far the media are carrying out Joe’s instructions to the letter!