Staging

Staging is one of the immoralities that makes for poor journalism these days. If I am watching a news story and can tell if something has been scripted or staged, it almost makes me want to turn the TV off. Hell, I even can't stand it on reality television shows and wrestling, and those are supposed to be staged. I would have definitely been one of the reporters rolling my eyes at the NFL draft in Dave Wertheimer's article. There is a fine line between news and cinema, and you simply cannot make a news story a work of fiction. If a farmer is actually plowing and you get it on camera, it is news, but if you tell him to recreate his actions, he is a performer in your fictional work of crappy journalism. And most people, intelligent people, will catch the staged parts of your story because subjects are not actors, they are normal people. If anyone have ever seen owners of car dealers or local businesses of some sort try to do their own commercials on TV, it is pretty clear that ordinary people are not good actors. It is best to keep the news what it is: news. If any up-and-coming journalist is not prepared to do that, then they should go to film school.