Goodbye to Local News

By Timothy Karr

In a final act of defiance, the anchor at Honolulu Fox affiliate KHON-2 gives management a piece of his mind, before they pull the plug.

THE BIGGEST THREAT to the type of broadcast journalism that Edward R. Murrow championed in the 1950s comes today not from Congressmen of the Joe McCarthy mold, but by way of the industry itself. Profit-driven broadcast owners have strangled off local reporting to line their pockets with more advertising dollars.

This crisis in journalism is explicitly tied to the dangers of consolidated media ownership and speculation. We all suffer when media corporations trample public service and local journalism in their drive for larger profits.

Joe Moore, a veteran newscaster at Fox’s Honolulu affiliate, KHON-2, can speak well to the issue. On Thursday, he anchored the station’s newscast as sweeping newsroom layoffs were taking effect. As a small concession from management, Moore was allowed to write and read his sign off to viewers. Courtesy of NewsBlues (a newscaster gossip site).

The Transcript of the Final Newscast

Finally tonight, this has been a difficult day for most of us here at KHON2. It was the final day on the job for our general manager Rick Blangiardi, who refused to carry out the mass firing of over one third of our station employees as ordered by our new owners, who will take over tomorrow.

The firings are not a matter of cutting excess fat to improve efficiency; they will be a butchering of an already lean workforce that will remove muscle, bone, and vital organs.

(click here to read the rest of the transcript)

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