Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Bullies Are Bad But Should Emails Be News?

A Chicago news anchor recently received several nasty emails about her appearance.

One writer said, "Why are your dresses, outfits so skin tight for a pregnant woman?"

The anchor responded to the emails via a Facebook post, which read:

“To Karen, Gene and Sabrina who wrote to me today, use your time better. Pay someone a compliment. Do a good deed. To everyone else who has sent messages of congratulations and well wishes, you are keeping me motivated through these last 6 weeks.”

The next day, the anchor addressed the situation on air.

Should the station have used air time to broadcast what was initially a private situation? Should they have turned the nasty emails into news? Aren't they just doing the story because it happened to one of their own?

Or, are they doing their audience a service by taking the bullying incident and making it a larger situation because it happened to a (relatively) famous person? Are they using her experience as a vehicle to address the larger issue?

Is there anything wrong with journalists doing stories about their personal experiences?

1 comment:

Johnterri Rivers-Maldonado said...

At first I thought it wasn't a good idea for this news anchor to use air time to address the emails regarding her "skin tight" clothing because they were in fact private emails. However, and I read further and notice that her addressing the emails on air did address bulling on a wider scale I felt that the news anchor did a great job of making herself a public specimen on air. Not only did she give others the courage to come out who are being bullied, she also let the world know that such behavior is not okay.
'