MSNBC Correspondent Rides Around Parking Lot Gabbing About Teen Car Surfing, Sex Trafficking Story Ignored
Somewhere in the bowels of the MSNBC newsroom, a decision was made today to devote considerable coverage to getting to the bottom of a disconcerting juvenile epidemic: car surfing.
That's right, the "fearless gamble" that is "all the rage" among American teenagers, according to NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders, is an important enough story for a national cable news network to send one of its intrepid reporters to give live reports throughout the morning and into the mid-afternoon.
While the topic of car surfing received substantial coverage on "Jansing & Co." with Chris Jansing, "News Live" with Contessa Brewer, and "News Nation" with Tamron Hall, the recent sting operation that uncovered employees at a New York City Planned Parenthood office offering advice to a man posing as a pimp who admitted to exploiting minors as sex slaves received but a scant 30-second news brief during the 10 a.m. hour of "Jansing & Co."
"I've never heard of this before," confessed Jansing. "What exactly is car surfing?"
Sanders, reporting live while driving himself in circles around a parking lot in Florida, explained to Jansing that car surfing is "dangerous," "illegal," and "obscure," but that throngs of teens are dying in pursuit of this "fearless gamble."
All death is tragic, but let's put MSNBC's abundance of car-surfing coverage and dearth of human-trafficking coverage into perspective. According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, which Sanders cited in his report, there were a total of 99 cases of car-surfing injuries identified in American newspapers from 1990 to 2008. On the other hand, the 2006 US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked in the United States annually.
Instead of covering a tragedy that afflicts thousands of people each year, MSNBC opted to investigate an "obscure" fools' errand that hasn't harmed 100 people in the past 20 years.
"Is it okay to drive and do TV at the same time?" asked a smirking Jansing.
Perhaps a more appropriate question to ask would be: is it okay for a national news correspondent to be giving live reports behind the wheel of a moving vehicle on a story about teens doing stupid things with moving vehicles, at the expense of investigating allegations that a nationally-renowned abortion clinic is complicit in helping people who admit to selling minors for sex?
A transcript of Chris Jansing's news brief on the Planned Parenthood scandal can be found below:
MSNBC
Jansing & Co.
February 8, 2011
10:14 a.m. EST
An anti-abortion group called Live Action says its undercover cameras caught big problems at a New York City Planned Parenthood office. The man in it poses as a pimp and asks for help for underage sex workers. Live Action insists the video shows that employees at Planned Parenthood are willing to help people who sexually exploit minors. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America said it will retrain its employees on how to deal with situations like this.
--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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Comments
The reporter could have at
Submitted by rwesley2.0 on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:29pm.
The reporter could have at least jumped up on top and shown us what all the hulabaloo is about.
How to boost ratings at MSNBC
Submitted by Radical1979 on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:32pm.
Or, they could have allowed us to vote on which MSNBC personality to put on the roof and demonstrate...
Well, now that MSNBC is doing
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:31pm.
Well, now that MSNBC is doing a whole feature on it, I'm guessing we can kiss "obscurity" good-bye... and there will probably be a big increase in the number of injuries.
Somewhere in the bowels of Newsbusters
Submitted by Rush to Judgement on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:46pm.
The team works furiously to find liberal bias on an otherwise un-newsworthy day.
Here's a thought: every idiot who falls off a car does not automatically make the news, so there are probably many, many more injuries out there. I say let the dummies learn their lesson, but don't complain that a network didn't cover the story you'd like them to cover...unless all media outlets are both monitored and required to cover such stories.
otherwise un-newsworthy day?*
Submitted by cajun2 on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 6:16pm.
So you come to NewsBusters( Exposing Liberal Media Bias) because no one in the lame stream media were cheerleading your Messiah today?
I say thank you to NewsBusters every day for exposing the idiots in the media. Journalists shouldn't have to be reminded of the serious issues facing our country today.
Sounds to me
Submitted by Rush to Judgement on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 6:44pm.
Like you're complaining about a network you don't watch not covering a story you weren't going to see anyway.
In other words, I don't like that station, but the people who do should be watching what I want them to watch. Right-ee-oh...........
Oh lookee.....Deddy's back.
Submitted by Blonde on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 7:37pm.
Same stupid cheet.
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
Yeah
Submitted by ant on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 8:53pm.
There you go, genius, to you this is responsible journalism; "let's ignore a revelation of blatant fraud and the aiding and abetting of at least four crimes because that story goes against our political agenda,....but we're unbiased and all that. Right after the break, we'll satisfy 'Rush to Judgement's' intellectual curiousity with another 8 hours of hatin' on Bristol and Sarah."
And your point would be?
Submitted by Blonde on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 7:36pm.
If you think there is no media bias....well, don't click the NewsBusters link.
The point here being, that Georgie was "demanding" an answer (his answer) to HIS question.
Obviously, your brain in the liberal fever swamp is too soupy to get that. You may go now.
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
'Sex workers'. Sounds so wholesome.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:47pm.
Just like bums, vagabonds, hobos and tramps are now 'the homeless.'
Ya can't report the news if
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 6:52pm.
Ya can't report the news if you have no idea what news is.
The Planned Parenthood Story Does Not Fit the Libs Agenda!
Submitted by gruyere cheese on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 7:29pm.
The "Look, No Hands on the Wheel" game played by careless teenages do? This news piece got coverage by non other than the mother hens at MSNBC: Tamron, Chris and Ms. Contessa.
100 people in the last 20 years affected by careless teenagers...um...stupid is as stupid does!
It;s that mayhem guy
Submitted by redright88 on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 8:55pm.
He's funny
It was stupid...but...
Submitted by Spud on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 9:09pm.
First of all this segment originated, as a large percentage of MSNBC's early dayside live hits tend to, as a Today show segment...
http://www.hulu.com/watch/213804/nbc-today-show-car-surfers-catching-a-r...
So blame the Today show for coming up with this segment. MSNBC did multiple hits on it because that amortizes the cost of doing the segment on Today. Standard operating procedure. Whenever you get a live remote hit on Today, it will likely wind up on MSNBC at least once.
Was it a silly bordering on gratuitous segment? Probably.
But I don't get the non-sequitur reference to the Planne Parenthood story. Has there been any more news on that story since it broke last week? And I mean "news"...as in new developments...not "news" as in having people on to argue over the story or having a reporter do yet another rehash of the story. And I really don't get why Fitzsimmons is convinced that if they hadn't aired Sanders piece that they would have aired the Planned Parenthood story. And...yes...Fitzsimmons apparently does believe that because he wrote that the Sanders segment came "at the expense of" the Planned Parenthood story...which by definition implies linkage between the two. Me? I just don't see that. There's no correlation and no evidence of any correlation between the two stories.
Actually, Spud
Submitted by ant on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 9:29pm.
I think it is you who is being unfair. A news story on a house fire, for example, requires no follow-up, it happens, we all know it, nothing much you can do about it after the fact. The PP story is one in which the news people, if they were truly 'watch-dogs', are the contributors to the story. The media, if honest, would be expounding on this story," how often does this happen?", they would ask. They could pursue Congresscritters in the funding of PP, they could pursue the angle of illegal trafficking of under-age prostitutes, they could wonder aloud what their messiah thinks of these crimes. If this is a 'dead' story it is only because the media truly are 'drive-by's, they have not pursued any angle of this story except to doubt the investigators ( a role the media should try once in awhile).
I guarantee if some conservative group got stung like PP, the story would never rest, and you know it. Hell, Rachel Madcow spent a month talking about some conservatives that met with Ugandan officials and, in her little mind, that made them complicit with the hanging of gays.
Spud, The reason I make a
Submitted by Alex Fitzsimmons on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 9:16am.
Spud,
The reason I make a connection between the Planned Parenthood story and the car surfing coverage is because, as you know, there are strict time constraints in cable news. Cable outlets have to make editorial decisions every day regarding content. Yesterday, MSNBC could have spent 5 minutes at 10am, 12pm, and 2pm reporting on the Planned Parenthood controversy. Instead, they spent 5 minutes throughout the day talking about a "silly" and "gratuitous" segment about teen car surfing. It highlights MSNBC's liberal, or at least anti-conservative, priorities, which furthers the MRC's mission of exposing and combating liberal media bias.
-Alex Fitzsimmons
--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.