Asimov’s Science Fiction today posted a response to that Wood TV 8 hit piece on them that I mentioned the other day (see In Which I Discover My Wife’s Adult Magazine Collection) that claims Wood TV 8 distorted and outright lied about several key parts of its story on Asimov’s.
Reporter Kristi Andersen and the News 8 anchors portrayed the QSP magazine drive as children buying and selling magazines. As a matter of fact, in this fundraising drive, students sell magazines to their family, their neighbors, and their parentsÂ’ coworkers. We reviewed the QSP catalog with the reporter and showed her that many of the magazines are for adults, including Esquire, Vogue, GQ, and Elle. As we showed the reporter, the QSP catalog has a section specifically geared to children, and indicates age-appropriate titles. AsimovÂ’s was correctly listed in the catalog, not under “Children,” but under “Science/Technology/Environmental.” The reporter chose not to include this information in her report, and, in fact, said that we “did not know it was on the school magazine list.”
In Ms. AndersenÂ’s report, she stated that QSP dropped AsimovÂ’s as a result of the parentÂ’s complaint and News 8Â’s subsequent investigation, saying the “magazine has now been pulled from the list,” and that “since 24 News 8 started this investigation, QSP has permanently severed its relationship” with Asimov’s. In fact, we provided Ms. Andersen with documentation showing that our relationship with QSP ended several months earlier over remit rates (the amount of money the publisher receives from the agent for each subscription the agent sells), not as a result of this incident.
. . .
News 8 should have allowed AsimovÂ’s Science Fiction the opportunity to respond to their characterization of our magazine, and our disappointment in their distortion of the facts is profound. In our opinion, Ms. Andersen and the News 8 channel are not practicing journalism, but sensationalism. They know, better than most, that “sex sells.”
As I said in my first post on this issue, the area Wood TV-8 covers is very conservative. The last big story on Grandville I can remember was during the last election cycle about whether or not Grandville should keep its ban on Sunday alcohol sales, so this kind of reporting plays well around here. This is a part of the state where you can get suspended from school for wearing a Korn t-shirt.
This sort of sensationalistic reporting tends to go over well and shows up a lot on this Wood TV 8.