Word: perret
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with his HIV-positive status, were immediately obscured by complaints about what had just been shown. Local stations were inundated with phone calls; station managers, already aghast at what their cameras had captured, broadcast apologies and toll-free numbers for viewers to call for psychological counseling. Says Larry Perret, news director for KCBS-TV, which pulled away just before the fatal shot was fired: "With all due respect to my competitors, you couldn't have anticipated this. This was a legitimate news story. You got a guy on the freeway closing two of L.A.'s most populated interchanges...
...past, the public has rewarded stations for pursuing just this kind of story, though typically less bloody ones. "Usually the ratings shoot sky-high, and the viewers use their remote controls and zap from station to station. They watch them," says Perret. Explains Manhattan psychologist Steven Fishman: "A lot of people have pent-up emotions, so it's cathartic for them to observe such violent action." But, says Sissela Bok, an ethicist at Harvard: "That just shows that the lines between news and entertainment have become very blurred." Former TV news producer Derwin Johnson, a professor at the Columbia Graduate...