John Brummett takes up the matter of TV reporters who shouted at the Anne Pressly murder suspect on his walk past TV cameras (shown in clip above).

The rule is not that reporters must eschew emotion or caring. A reporter without emotion or caring wouldn’t be much of a reporter. The rule is that a reporter is to eschew any activity or association that might reveal or even signal a bias, for that might undercut the credibility of the reporting.

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But this particular journalistic indiscretion surely can be dismissed as a specially emotional case. That’s as long as the shouting reporter doesn’t end up covering the case or trial. In that event, the discerning viewer might have sound reason to wonder about the detached precision and balance of the information the reporter was delivering.

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