Ron Fineman's ON THE RECORD

In a close vote, Eric Spillman defeated Patrick Healy 37-35 to become your choice for best LA TV field reporter for 2006. It is only the second time since OTR began that someone other that Patrick Healy has won the poll. You'll recall that Dave Lopez won in 2004.

According to Eric's bio on the KTLA web site, he's a local guy, having attended Hoover High in Glendale before graduating from Berkeley. Before coming to KTLA, he was a radio reporter at KNEW in Oakland, a TV reporter KSBY San Luis Obispo, and also at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.

Spillman is one of the mainstays on the KTLA Morning Show, where he has shown he is good at the hard news as well as the feature stuff. Congrats to Spillman for beating someone who is very difficult to defeat. Most OTR readers are pretty critical, so I think getting your seal of approval is a nice honor.

The E Coli Spinach story broke on Thursday. But on KTLA's 10pm newscast, they didn't run the story until 10:25! Someone certainly had a lapse in news judgment. By contrast, it was the scheduled lead for both KTTV and KCAL at 10pm (both led with the end of a chase, as did KTLA).

And it was the lead story on KCBS at 11pm, #2 on KNBC and #3 story on KABC. The only other newscast which seemed to miss the significance of the E Coli story was KCOP, which ran it at 11:09 as part of a larger group of short anchor voice-overs.

While KTLA overlooked the importance of the spinach story, they did have a pretty fair lead (after the chase). While giving a speech to an Hispanic media group, the mayor launched into a tirade against John & Ken, calling them "hate mongers." If John and Ken were wondering whether their show on KFI has an impact, they can wonder no more. Obviously, they've gotten under Mayor Villaraigosa's skin in a big way.

I cannot remember any LA mayor ever publicly attacking local talk show hosts, or any opinion makers, in such a manor. It is a shame that Villaraigosa had to resort to name calling when it comes the illegal alien issue, but of course we've seen it before. The cries of 'racist' and 'hate monger' are just too easy for those who are long on emotion but short on facts.

If you don't want tough questioning, you can always watch Larry King. And though I am not a fan of Nancy Grace, I think it is a mistake to suggest she did anything wrong in her interview with the mother of a missing baby.

In case you missed it, the day after Grace taped her interview with Melinda Duckett, the woman killed herself. In that interview, Grace pressed Duckett about where she was when her baby disappeared. Duckett would not answer. She also asked Duckett about her refusal to take a lie detector test. When you realize how often parents are involved in hurting their kids, and then you find a mother avoiding reasonable questions, it's not hard to imagine that this woman knew more than she was saying. And I think it would go without saying, that if Melinda Duckett were innocent, Grace's questioning was not going to push her into suicide.

I realize that Grace has a lot of detractors. But that doesn't mean they're always right. In this case, I believe that Grace was doing her job. No one should try to make her feel guilty about that.

KTLA's Walter Richards reported that "Thousands walked off their county jobs to make a statement on the streets." A union spokesman said they want affordable health care…but there was no mention in the story of what that is, or what they get right now. There was also no specifics mentioned about salary. We did learn that the union wants an end to the county contracting out for workers. However, we got no view from the union as to why that is bad thing, nor did we hear from the county as to why contracting out might be a good thing. For example, could it save taxpayer money? In fact, while Richards did his story devoted to the county worker walkout, he never even interviewed anyone from the county. A totally one-sided story.

I actually got better information by watching a 25 second voice over on KTTV. At least there I learned that the workers want the same ten percent raise that was already given to deputies and firefighters. Richards didn't even have that much.

I know well that there is only so much ground you can cover in a contract dispute. But Richards' work was simply lazy and worthless. There is no excuse of that level of work in Los Angeles television.

In this clip, Rob Fukuzaki tells the story of a gag that Fox sports pulled off, but did not sit well with a lot of people. They had talked about giving away a car during a football game. Makes sure you check out Marc Brown's face when he says "Fox?"

Regarding the controversy surround the Pope's comments about Islam, KCBS's Paul Magers read the following: "Some critics are calling him a new Hitler. Tonight the Pope is under fire for comments about Islam and Jihad, when he appeared to say that early Muslims spread the religion through violence. The Vatican says the Pope meant no offense, but one of the world’s top Muslim clerics is calling for a public apology to all of the world’s Muslims."

A new Hitler? Did anyone really say that? And just how many people are "some?" I did an internet search, and found only one person to make that comparison. Here is what it said in The Sydney Morning Herald: "Influential Turkish legislator Salih Kapusuz fired back today, saying the Pope would go down in history ``in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.''

Do you think it is relevant that only ONE Muslim legislator compared the Pope to Hitler? Should not the story at least have identified just who was making the outlandish comparison?

I guess that when you have advanced colon cancer, any time you have a scan, it is significant. But I do feel like the one I have on Wednesday is bigger than normal. That's because this is my first PET/CT scan since I've been on Erbitux. My last scan - pre-erbitux- showed that the cancer in my lymph system was spreading. So we are very much hoping that this new drug will turn things around. Yet, as you know...you have to go into these things being prepared for the worst, while of course hoping and praying for the best. While the scan is tomorrow, I will not get results until next Tuesday. So while I do appreciate your concern, I won't have anything to tell you until the September 29th issue. Thanks in advance for your support and well wishes.

WHO ARE YOU?

I invite all you to write in and tell your fellow readers a little about yourself. What you do for a living, why you are interested in TV news and anything else you'd like to include about yourself. You can email to Bruin74@aol.com .

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