The Chainlink

Hiya folks,
If you knew you were going to be interviewed for a TV news spot, and you knew from talking to the reporter that the piece was on the waves of new cyclists hitting the streets in teh warm weather, and you knew that you were being approached specifically for something safety-related, what points would you want to make sure you got out there?

Looking to generate a list and pare it down, thanks.

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I've done a short professional stint in small market news and I can appreciate just how difficult it is to put together a good piece of journalism, broadcast or print. With that appreciation I'll also submit that for a major market like Chicago, we have some of the worst broadcast journalism in the land and lot of it emanates from FOX.

I think Saxonmeyer did the bicycling community and Chicago a disservice. Why so much air time devoted to that young messenger with so many injuries and why no questions into why he has been injured so much? Perhaps he's a dick in traffic? We don't know. I'll wager there are hundreds if not thousands of people who ride year round for years with no scrapes or injuries, why didn't he talk to them, find out what they do to safely ride? He probably could have found some in the building that FOX is in. Maybe he did but their stories didn't fit within the story's direction. We don't know.

Is that doctor's experience with injured riders more prominent than with injured drivers? Everyone with half a clue knows that riding a bike in any city has the potential for danger but so does walking down my back deck stairs. Reading Howard's initial thread starting post, he was approached with the idea of talking about bicycle safety and quite honestly, I must be blind and deaf because I didn't see nor hear much of that topic in Saxonmeyer's piece. Couldn't he have done some story research with any of the local bike advocacy groups or clubs? If he did we don't know that.

I should probably apologize for my vitriol directed at FOX and Saxonmeyer but I don't think I will, his condescending VO in the first two minutes about did me in and I really lost it with their fucking banter at the end of the piece. Oh, right, throw in Bicycling's declaration that Chicago is the tenth best city to ride in, even though we just scared every viewer shitless about riding a bicycle in the city.

Everyone have a great Sunday!
The Fox piece is bad on so many levels that it is disturbing.

They led with the bicycling is unsafe message and ended with the reporter talking about his own bike. How confusing is that to the average listener?

They tried to tie the story to Earth Day and how is that relevant?

They could have as easily replaced cyclists with motorists or train riders or any other transportation choice. OMG, trains killed xxx people last year and none of them were wearing seatbelts or helmets. We better be careful. In fact if you look at the statistics they post on the web site, being a pedestrian is 10x more dangerous than cycling.

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