ABC Desperately Staging the News

Michelle Malkin is covering, or uncovering, the story of ABC News yesterday allegedly setting up a news stunt in Birmingham, Alabama, to gauge the reaction---read that degree of homophobia and anti-gay bigotry---to gay and lesbian couples showing affection in public. This is to air later on Primetime Live to show what a backwards group of wretched bigots we Southerners are.

Staging has been a favorite term of realtors for a long time, as in staging your house for a quick sale. But staging and manufacturing the news is less known. Yet it happens all the time. I did it for the slow news Monday editions at my newspaper many years ago. You have nothing to write about so you dream up some controversial story idea, and then call around and get sources to give opposing opinions about whatever it is. And presto! you have a PAGE ONE CONTROVERSY on your hands. (Meanwhile, the combatants were half asleep on their sofas never dreaming they were in a war of the worlds conflict that I had just dreamed up and staged for the Monday edition of my newspaper!)

But this takes the cake. It's disgusting and frankly one of the reasons I watch less and less of the behemoth broadcasts anymore.

ABC News can rest assured that I am duly offended by their staged antics, even before I see the paid actors, gay or otherwise, hamming it up in pre-rehearsed public "love" scenes. Note to ABC News, poor taste is poor taste, no matter who is participating in it. And if that's what they call bigotry, then so be it.

Meanwhile Wednesday's IBD Editorials tells us why turning off NBC is the greatest thing we can do for the environment.