Do broadcast journalism programs actually *teach* incorrect verb tenses and usage?

• “Peyton Manning winning his first game for the Broncos” (when the game ended just before the newscast began).
• “Community leaders meeting with constituents about the new tax initiative” (about an event scheduled to take place the following week).
• “The zoo welcoming a new resident” (a few days after the baby giraffe’s birth, which spawned a month of promotions and celebration).
• “Local residents braving the rain to watch the Tour de Colorado.” (Was this before the broadcast, a projection for the future, or both–because the Tour de Colorado lasted several days? It clearly wasn’t happening at the same time as the newscast, which began at 10 p.m., well after the cyclists had turned in for the night.)

Nearly EVERY. SINGLE. STORY has this problem. It’s enough to make us poor, beleaguered composition instructors crazy. (As a matter of principle, I don’t even watch the TV news. I live with people who do, however, so I overhear snippets.)

Can we please have more hard news and less fluff?

A police officer I know told me there are more than 100 active-shooter incidents annually in the United States. I asked, with some indignation, why we never hear about most of them. Oh, he says, it’s not really considered news unless more than five people are killed.

We hear about (and witness) how the 24/7 news cycle has led to the media manufacturing stories — or at least blowing non-important fluff out of proportion — to get more of those all-important clicks. But there are real stories out there that, for some reason, are being ignored. I knew details about the Waldo Canyon fire because it was twenty miles away from me and dominated local coverage. My cousin in Michigan could find little online about that or the other fires in the West, but the “news” channels had plenty about Britney and Paris and their latest sartorial choices. Now, celebrity puff pieces apparently generate more site visits. But I believe that a serious news site, one that actually put some time and effort into developing and marketing solid stories with strong human-interest angles, could compete with the Britney-and-Paris tripe. It might take longer, it might take more work, and investors might not see a return on their money immediately. I think it could be done, however.

Back to the local news: As soon as the Waldo Canyon fire was 85% contained, they moved on. Sure, there have been stories about the aftermath, the people who lost their homes, the flash-flood danger. But coverage of other massive wildfires in the West? Not so much. Yet they have time to promote some silly girl in Arizona — not even local — who wants a date with Tim Tebow for her birthday. She started a Facebook page, apparently in an attempt to grab his attention or that of his agents, and has all of 200 followers. I don’t even know how this showed up on the radar of a news station in Colorado (because Tebow spent two seasons with the Broncos, even though he isn’t in Denver anymore???), let alone why it’s news, let alone why anyone would deem it more worthy of air time than an active shooter in Detroit, a wildfire in Montana, or Margaret Atwood’s upcoming lecture at Colorado College. If they’re looking for human interest, we have plenty of it right here: local firefighters who helped put out the Waldo Canyon blaze, zookeepers working with the baby gorilla, authors, artists, athletes…a whole city full of more interesting people pursuing more worthy endeavors than trying to snag a date with a pro football player.

Tonight, the Broncos beat the Steelers (ending Ben Roethlisberger’s game with an interception and three sacks, which I loved because I think Ben Roethlisberger is a moral degenerate and sexist pig who should be rotting in a prison cell rather than playing in the NFL). Naturally, this was the lead story on the news. The main focus? People’s posts on Twitter and Facebook about what they were eating during the game. I kid you not. In what universe is “We’re having hot wings and beer” news?!

A modicum of detail-oriented professionalism wouldn’t hurt, either.

According to Wikipedia, those of us in Colorado Springs and Pueblo live in one of the 100 largest media markets in the United States. Okay, we’re number 90, so we’re not high on that list. But still, there are more than 525,000 people in these two cities, not counting those who live in the suburbs and smaller towns in our viewing area. All that means, I would think, that we could expect quality and professionalism in our local news. I understand the occasional slip-up; after all, it’s a fast-paced medium and we’re all human. But when I’ve watched the news, I’ve spotted almost nightly misspellings or poor grammar in captions, and a regular failure to coordinate images, captions, and speech. For example, it’s not unusual to see a photo of a bear in a tree in some subdivision while the anchor talks about a voter-registration drive. Then, when the anchor moves on to the story about the bear, the image shows flooding in Haiti.

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I don’t know of anyone who thinks journalism is in good shape today. In fact, most of us agree it’s pretty pathetic. The advent of online media and technology could make the news much better — more immediate, more comprehensive, more interactive. And while it sometimes does, it has also led, I think, to a sort of laziness that comes from believing the Internet is ephemeral, mistakes don’t matter because you can always go back and fix them, and the more content, the faster, the better … whether or not that content is worth reading or watching. Obviously this attitude has also bled over into more traditional media.

I don’t think it’s an economic model that provides for long-term success. As the quality of the product deteriorates, there will be fewer consumers, hence fewer advertisers. Unless, of course, we all become so immured to the lack of professional, solid, accurate content that we stop even noticing.