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I should just stop watching Channel 5 news
By adamg on Fri, 06/20/2008 - 5:11pm
At 5 p.m., their lead story was basically: On a recording, Neil Entwistle sounded surprised when he talked to police about his dead wife and baby.
Meanwhile, today, a Dorchester guy was sentenced to FOUR CONSECUTIVE LIFE SENTENCES for slaughtering four people.
Eh, just a bunch of poor people in Dorchester, happens all the time, not even newsworthy, right, Channel 5?
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Comments
It's now 5:29
And Channel 5 has reported on a lawsuit over a crane collapse in New York, some Holliston family "camping" at home because they can no longer afford the gas to drive their Hummer up to Maine and Martha Stewart being refused a visa to visit England. Still nothing about the Carnes sentencing.
Channel 5
Channel 5 has turned into just another local news channel.
Overblown and hardly any local news.
It's sad.
Ed Harding has to go.
Bianca de la Garza? She's from Fox, for pete's sake!
Please, channel 5, stick a fork in yourselves.
I gave up long ago.
Don't feel bad....
In a city that considers itself so politically active, there's only ONE radio show in SF I've found that's live and local - at either end of the political spectrum. Morning drive, evening drive, no matter. It's all syndicated. Gene Burns has a nightly show but it doesn't begin until 7:00 PM local time. How sad is that?
Uh...
That's NOT just Channel 5. That's all the "news" media in Boston. And in the U.S. as a whole. It's not about actually telling you what happened during the course of the day. It's about real-life soap operas.
I moved to Canada not too long ago and one thing about the news that is interesting here is that every time ANYONE gets shot, it gets a TON of coverage in the media. There are fewer murders here but it's all they ever talk about on the news when it does happen. And actually, considering that, it's tough to tell which is worse.
News
Sadly, stories about the justice system working just don't make the news. That story was plastered all over the place when the murders happened and, I guarantee, it would make headlines for weeks if the killer got acquitted on appeal or escaped from prison or something. However, cops doing their job, catching a murderer, and the DA's office sucesfully prosecuting him - apparently not news-worthy.
I've got to think that a
I've got to think that a conviction in that Hopkinton trial would be at the top of the evening newscasts, but that's just a hunch.
Four consecutive life
Four consecutive life sentences? He gets a college degree in prison and it's out in 20 years.
Nice try
Four consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole.
In fairness
The sentences close out a process that was covered awhile back. And let's not forget that video/audio rules and the stuff from the Entwistle trial was strong stuff
Oh, sure
The better day to have seen how Channel 5 did was probably the day before, when Carnes was found guilty - and, I admit it, I didn't watch the news that night.
But there was some pretty strong stuff at that trial, too - I mean, he pumped 13 bullets into four guys at close range in a basement (not satisfied with shooting them, he shot them again and again to make sure they were really dead), and yet, I don't recall the Globe putting any testimony or evidence from the trial on page 1, like it did today with Entwistle (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about that, though). Oh, and hey, what about the guy now on trial for allegedly killing some girl who wouldn't have sex with him, stuffing her body in a closet for a few days, then dragging her body down to Franklin Park and setting it on fire? Sounds kind of strong to me, but, eh, again, that's just Dorchester.
So I guess my problem isn't really with Channel 5, but with Boston media in general. I like a good grisly trial story as much as the next guy, but I really think they've moved away from news coverage and into trial porn with Entwistle - at the expense of covering equally horrific crimes in the city they're based in. At some point - and no offense meant to the family of the victims of the Entwistle case - you have to ask why the case of a rich white suburban guy with good hair and a British accent deserves so much more attention than the cases of poor brown and black guys in Boston (and in the Carnes case, the victims were from a suburb, even). No, it's not a new phenomenon (in the bad old days, I hear, Boston reporters even had a code phrase to let their editors know the crimes they were seeing in the police log involved black people and so weren't worth bothering with - "It's dark out tonight"), but that doesn't mean it's right.
And now I'll go find something healthier to obsess about for awhile.
The Globe did cover the sentencing
Including the statements by victim family members, with a photo on the front of the City & Region section and a story inside. The Herald ran an AP story.