Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Excellence in Reporting--Not!--Award for Today

I heard a news conference this morning about a serious story that had an unintended moment of near-humor. The story in question was about a Dallas SWAT officer that was assisting a federal agency in the service of a warrant at a residence, and he was shot by someone inside the house.

Reporters were gathered around as a police spokesman made a statement. As you might imagine, someone asked for details of the warrant; yeah, right, the department isn't going to blab about an undercover investigation to the media, especially when the federal agency is the one in charge. But the ridiculous moment came after the spokesman described the five people in the house as one adult female, three adult males and an infant. After the details-about-the-warrant question, someone piped up with this bit of genius:

REPORTER: Were all five people in the house taken into custody?
(At this point, I'm thinking, umm--one of those people was a baby, so no, probably not.)
SPOKESMAN: They were all detained, but I don't know of their status after that. Obviously, the infant was not charged with anything.

I know that everyone at these conferences wants to get a question in, but I can't imagine a sillier one than that being asked today.

Well, if they can arrest an animal, maybe they can arrest a baby: A cow that has been responsible for two fatal traffic accidents in Cambodia has been taken into custody by the police. (And no, the cow wasn't behind the wheel in either accident; it stood out in the middle of the road and people either crashed into it or veered off the road trying to avoid it.)

Stupid criminal of the day (non-baby or animal division): If you're already on probation for drunk driving, it's probably not a good idea to be caught drinking a 12-pack of beer on the county courthouse lawn.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nothing against you----just different perception---but about your thought re: reporter. Of course if all the adults were taken into custody, the infant would obviously been taken into "custody" with CPS. But you're right; TOTALLY ridiculous and very misleading question.