WFAA CH.8 report on the new Cowboys stadium

[Steve Eberhart]

Did anyone see the story on Channel 8 Friday night about the new Dallas Cowboy stadium? The tease was they had information the Cowboys didn't want you to see.
They apparently obtained some detailed information about the construction of the stadium which for some reason is top secret. They mentioned "homeland security" and a threat from the Cowboys not to reveal the plans for the stadium but they were doing it anyway. The live shot is the reporter at an Arlington High School game as a backdrop. They show the very few "exclusive" details and then run several shots of High School cheerleaders talking about performing in front of crowds and how nervous they'd be in front of a stadium like that...and how much pressure they are under cheering at a high school game.
Uhhhh, excuse me? Relevance here?? I thought the story was about THE STADIUM???
I'm only guessing the reporters have been asked to bring an emotion to the stories and try to relate it to something tangible but...this was sooooo horribly a stretch.
How about interviewing a long time fan about what they think about the new stadium. How about talking to a player for their thoughts...perhaps a COWBOY cheerleader if you must rely on that distant connection...how about a spokesperson from Homeland Security explaining why the plans are being kept secret...
That was some of the worst reporting I have ever seen.

 

[arnoldevns]

That was pretty strange. The story is that Jerry Jones and company got millions of taxpayer dollars for this thing but don't want anyone to see what it will look like until they're ready. The Fort Worth Star Telegram disagreed and filed a Freedom Of Information Act request for the plans. The city of Arlington tried to use security as an excuse not to release the information. The Texas Attorney General disagreed. The plans were released on Friday. However, what was released was only the preliminary plans. They weren't nearly as detailed as what some people thought they might be and they may very well have been significantly changed since then.

I suspect that the reporter was told to do a story on this regardless of what was released. When he got them, he couldn't do much with them. I'm not sure why. I think there was plenty there to report on. Other stations did a decent job with this story.

The easiest thing to do would be to take the picture of the front of the stadium and show it to people in Arlington and see what they think of what they're paying for. You could have done that at the high school football game if you wanted to be somewhere with people who care about football. I guess that was too hard for the reporter to figure out.

 

[nuzguy]

Goood points in both posts. The "moment" the story obviously was designed to create obviously failed, at the hands of a scatter shot approach in attemptinfg to tie together a slew of irrrelevant and disparate points ranging from high school football to homeland securty to???????????. A news story should at least help create undestanding, not the unbridled confusion generated by the stadium package. Channel 8 tried to sell it based on extremely limited informagtion, plainly insufficient to warrant the futile effort put into whatever it was the Cowboys don't want everyone to know. So much for "you heard it on our ndwscast first." What was it we supposedly heard?