Tag: kprc

What not to do as a newscaster, demonstrated by Owen Conflenti

This one has me shaking my head.

As recently reported by MediaBistro’s TVSpy blog, KPRC-TV anchor Owen Conflenti recently made an obscene gesture while on camera, apparently directed at someone else in the studio. Mr. Conflenti thought his display of “the bird” was out of frame; unfortunately, he was quite wrong, as evidenced by the screenshot. The video’s missing (more on that later) but a lower quality copy is, however, available as part of the guyism.com story.

It’s one thing when an average person does something like this, but a professional newscaster should have a much higher standard of conduct. However, there are things that make this blunder in judgment worse: the absolutely abysmal handling of the incident from a PR standpoint.

First, as mentioned previously, KPRC-TV falls back on a ludicrous copyright claim for what is clearly a fair use of their broadcast. Due to the way YouTube takes down videos, there’s no way to even find the uploader and ask him/her to contest the copyright claim. (Hopefully he/she is out there reading this blog.) Shame on KPRC-TV for using copyright to interfere with the criticism of the on-air conduct of one of its news anchors.

Second, Mr. Conflenti and the VP of news at KPRC-TV, Deborah Callura  does what everyone in PR is trained not to do when confronted with an inconvenient question: say “no comment.” Ms. Callura could have simply stated something along the lines of “this is unacceptable conduct from an on-air personality and we will take steps to ensure it will not happen again.” Mr. Conflenti did eventually apologize (as evidenced by this follow-up story on TVSpy):

“I’m sorry to everyone for my offensive gesture on television last week,” Conflenti told the Houston Chronicle. “My actions were careless and unprofessional. I can assure my viewers it will never happen again.”

However, this didn’t happen almost a full week after the initial incident. This is an unacceptable delay for someone who is in the business of communications.

The silver lining to this cloud is that it’s a near-perfect case study for those entering the communications business, with a crystal clear lesson: don’t make obscene gestures (or use obscene language) when there’s any chance of you being on camera, and apologize quickly if you do and it gets noticed.

(An aside: I will admit my initial reaction was to find it a bit humorous. That does not change the fact that it is a story about unacceptable conduct by a communications professional, and I want to be sure my readers understand that.)

Aerial drones, lies, censorship, and video news reports

Whatever would I do without great posts from Boing Boing like this? The YouTube video embedded therein is a news report from KPRC-TV (which Houston folks will know as Channel 2, our local NBC affiliate). Stephen Dean reports on what was supposed to be a secret test of unmanned aerial drones conducted by the Houston Police Department (HPD). I’ve embedded it below for ease of commenting, but I do recommend you check out the Boing Boing post linked above for the comments.

[Edit 2016-04-05: the original video was deleted when the YouTube account was terminated due to multiple copyright infringement incidents. I have replaced it with another link I found, still online today.]

The scary part is a quote at 2:54 into the video:

Back at the secret test site, police helicopters claimed the entire airspace was restricted. They even threatened our Local 2 Investigates pilot with action from the FAA if we didn’t leave. But we checked with the FAA several times and there never was a flight restriction. That leaves some to wonder whether the police are ready to use terrorism fears since 9/11 to push the envelope even further into our private lives.

Really, HPD? What jurisdiction are you operating under? Airspace is the FAA’s jurisdiction; local police departments cannot arbitrarily restrict airspace. If local police were allowed to restrict airspace at will we would have total chaos, and there would be little use for the FAA at all.

The KPRC-TV news team had every right to gather the information they did. It is unfortunate that the law enforcement agencies running this exhibition (particularly HPD) did not secure the proper airspace restriction from the FAA, relying instead on the “no media allowed” on the invitation and bully tactics.

I think HPD is owed a visit by the FAA for what certainly appears to be a nominal disrespect of Federal law, possibly much worse. Law enforcement agencies must operate within the law, or risk losing the respect of the citizens which they have sworn to protect and serve. Example: Ever seen a police cruiser blasting by you, well in excess of the posted limits, without lights? They’ll say it’s a “code 2” or something similar, an emergency that’s just enough of an emergency that speed limits can go out the window, but not for lights and siren. Now, no matter what emergency we, the common citizens have, we are subject to getting a ticket if we do that. The same goes for stop signs and red lights, or even parking tickets.

And I’m not even touching on the downright creepy surveillance allowed by this technology yet. That’s almost a whole rant in and of itself. The fact that HPD went to these lengths to hide their new toy (which quite possibly fly in the face the First Amendment of the US Constitution in addition to FAA regulations) is quite chilling, and makes me wonder what kind of a society we live in now in \2010. The report mentions speed limit enforcement as one possibility; I think I made my viewpoint clear on that above. This is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi novels, made into reality. Sorry to disappoint, but I’d prefer as much of that be kept fiction as possible.