Tabloid TV in S.D.?

I guess I’m not one of those people who would agree with Jim Holtzman, the director of Channel 8 News, when he put his plug in for local news broadcasts (“San Diego TV News Among The Best In Nation, Director Says,” March 24). I don’t consider myself better informed simply because my favorite station hires better actors to read the work of capable journalists and reporters from newspapers like your own, almost verbatim, or (gulp) with a curious moral twist.

The fault does not rest solely with the reporter--even the shallowest news celebrity is probably overqualified to cover fires, car wrecks and faraway places--but with directors like Holtzman, whose “philosophy” is “no philosophy” at all.

Well, maybe the concept could be the “banality of evil.”

Evil? Well, Holtzman admits, our local news does not carry out the same kind of investigative reporting as, say, WFAA-TV in Dallas, the station that unearthed the SMU (Southern Methodist University) scandal. All of which leaves our local reporters doing something between television preaching and tabloid TV. Whatever it is, it isn’t news, and the people of San Diego have a right to demand better service.

DAVID C. REUTTER

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