KESQ Goes Down Tabloid Road

The local TV news business can be tough in a small market like Palm Springs. As a news director your roster consists of a mixture of veterans and rookies. Your news department is also a profit center, one of the most important ones for your station. You want to get as many eyeballs as possible to look at your product. You need to be out in the community to build brand awareness.

Taking all this into consideration, it is still disappointing that KESQ is going down an easy rpath by having an "exclusive" interview with the brother of slain Palm Springs Police Officer Gil Vega tomorrow night. It also promoting this with the nonsensical title of "Beyond the Badge." All this takes place in the TV sweeps month of November. (Sweeps occur 3 months of the year and are critical is setting local ad rates.)

I willingly point out that I have many friends at KESQ and its sister station KPSP or Channel 2. I consider them fine journalists and they were even kind enough to have me on during the Steve Pougnet mess.

As a rule commenting on local media when I have been a part of it for 20 years is something I try to avoid. I know the ins and outs of the media business. It is only when something egregious takes place in my view that commentary is necessary. And this "exclusive" sets off all the alarm bells.

"Beyond The Badge" smacks of something that came out of the promotions department. There is no new content or story advancement here. In my opinion, it is the pure exploitation of a tragedy for ratings purposes. In essence therefore,it is the very definition of tabloid journalism.

Ironically last week the Palm Springs Police Officers Association, (PSPOA) denounced the Desert Sun's interview with the brother of the suspect in the killing of officer Vega and his partner Lesley Zerebny as "tabloid journalism" when it clearly was not. That is not the case here as the promo runs endlessly with Mr. Vega wishing he could have "changed places" with his brother. This is the kind of stuff papers like the New York Daily News or Los Angeles Herald lived on in a bygone era.

Whoever thought putting something like this on TV was a good idea and then promoting really needs to rethink this. Ratings arent everything.

Steve Kelly can be reached at svericker12@gmail.com or followed on Twitter at @skellynj