Anchor’s announcement raises eybrows
Don Day March 2nd, 2008
Now-former KEZI lead anchor Rick Dancer read a news story that was both perfectly normal and completely strange at once last Sunday. Dancer told viewers about the latest entrant into the race for Secretary of State. The strange part, of course - is that Rick Dancer is the latest entrant. Dancer anchored the news on the top station in the Eugene, OR market for nearly two decades, before deciding to run for office as a Republican. KEZI devoted three minutes to the announcement and subsequent sign-off. “The standard practice is that the person resigns or takes a leave of absence at least a couple of days before they make their announcement independently from the station,” Poynter’s Kelly McBride told the Associated Press. “The problem is that the news staff, the people who are supposed to be providing fair, distanced, clear-eyed coverage of political campaigns, apparently have been co-opted into one of their own staff members’ campaigns.”
3 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | March 2nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The station also failed to identify Dancer’s party affiliation, just one example of how this was a campaign event and not a news piece (Oregon is a state where Democrats run as “Democrat for” and Republicans just run as “for”). Top Republican officials were in the studio during the announcement. Here’s a link to a local newspaper article with more details (you’ll never guess who the station owner heavily donates to!). I’d include it in the URL field but my comment disappears because the URL has an ampersand in it.
www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=70556&sid=4&fid=1
2. Safran | March 3rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
Anonymous: use TinyUrl for these sorts of things. Wonderful service.
3. Johnny Palmer | March 4th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I think this stinks like a bowl of baby snakes.
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