Media WatchDUH!

[btconet]

Alright, you may already know what I'm getting at.  Ever read or watched the news pertaining to a Transit related story and they totally show their ignorance about transit?  Sometimes, they'll state the most obvious fact of transit as if it's "investigative journalism" but usually they simply make a fuccup of varying magnitude, from naming a station that doesn't even exist to other geographical errors, to showing implied current footage behind a story that was obviously shot 10 years ago.

When you see or read em, post em here.

I'll start with one I saw last night on a Baltimore Station - sort of a new one to me.

The story was one of those where the anchors cut to someone live on location who then introduces a pre-taped story, and then comes back to that person live on location who closes off and and sends it back to the studio.

This particular story was about the MARC Inaugural service, and had the live intro done from in front of Baltimore Penn Station.  The reporter's Intro, story, and conclusion were spot on and informative.  He concluded by clearly stating again something to the essence of "90% of the tickets have been sold, your chance to get them at sales outlets is over, and you have to go online to buy your tickets."  Made perfect sense to me, but when he "sends it back to the studio," the anchor responds with:

"Thanks, Mike, and make sure you pick up a bunch of those tickets for us while you're down there!"



Apparently, he hadn't been listening!

[79MetroExtraMD]

I saw that report. WJZ. Their reporting is just so mediocre compared to WBAL and WBFF. (I dread the day they'll go HD), but yea I've seen alot of stories about that where they get their facts wrong or just plain ignorant of transit.

[Perry]

I'll have to scour the Las Vegas news scene.  For the most part, they're pretty accurate and pretty fair towards our system.  Last year when we had a rash of incidents where cars were running into our bus shelters and actually killing a couple of people, the media was doing its best not to blame us.  Unfortunately, our shelters are put up by Outdoor Promotions and not us, so a lot of where they were located are for advertising purposes rather than being a shelter for people to actually use.

Soon after a meeting in which one of the injured passengers, who is now an amputee, and the daughter who lost her mom ended, I happened to be waiting for the bus when our local Fox station was going to do a taped shot from that shelter.  I told them I'd move out of the way because I didn't want to be in the photo shoot, as I'm an RTC employee and I just didn't want to be on TV.  After he was done, I was talking with him and he said that the people in this town just drive crazy and the roads are just built in such a way that promote speed.  It was nice to talk to him and see that they understood the root of the problem and that we're not the evil ones who stick the shelters up in stupid locations that make it a target for an impaired motorist to hit.

[btconet]

From a story in the Gazette:

http://www.gazette.net/stories/01082009/laurnew120436_32470.shtml

The mid-day Maryland Area Regional Commuter bus shuttle between Laurel and Odenton – the only mass transit from Washington, D.C., to Laurel during the day – will also be eliminated.

Have they not heard of the #89M which actually seems to be an easier way into Laurel than riding up to Odenton and backtracking a bit?

And there is also CTC for the G and to a lesser extent the D.  Not that I'm too game on riding trucks, but it is access.

[Tristan]

http://www.wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=1560423

Look at all these Fairfax Connector routes here.  I wish I could edit my comment because I was trying to say that Fairfax Connector's fares are not actually at all related to this situation, but whatever.  Point still stands: Adam Tuss, WTOP's "Transportation Reporter" is a moron.