Did You Know...

When you don’t feel like covering the news, you manfacture it. Remember the story I broke last spring about NBC News engineering a sting at NASCAR to try and expose fans as anti-Muslim bigots? Well, it looks like the dinosaur networks haven’t learned from the embarrassing backlash to that pathetic episode. Or Rathergate. Or Shattered Glass. Or Janet Cooke. Or Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, according to the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, it looks like ABC News is engaging in media stage management and Theater of Journalism to expose anti-homosexual bigotry in the South:

ABC is doing a social experiment in Birmingham that includes having same-sex couples show affection for each other in public, according to Birmingham police department sources.

FOX6 first learned about this story from a Southside merchant who pointed out an RV parked at the corner of 20th Street and 11th Avenue South. The merchant said ABC was working on a week-long project to see how people would react to things like public displays of affection by gay and lesbian couples. A FOX6 news reporter approached the RV and talked with an “actor” who said, “Yes, we are working for ABC News.”

The “experiment” is apparently for ABC’s Primetime Live program, which is running a series of undercover stings titled “What Would You Do?”

Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.

Dinosaur network news motto: All the news that’s fit to stage.

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Here’s more about “What Would You Do?” from a 2005 article on the ABC News site.

Flashback: News sting ideas of the day (these came in after the NASCAR/NBC debacle…feel free to send/add your suggestions for new ABC News ideas):

I wonder if they would consider sending a professor wearing an “I Love W” button and an American flag pin into the faculty lounge at Harvard or some other liberal ivory tower with a hidden camera. I would love to see that experiment. I can’t imagine anyone at NBC doing that one. Maybe John Stossel at ABC, though?

…Perhaps when I get back from deployment, you can follow me around Seattle and see how I get treated wearing my Navy uniform…

…Why don’t you set up some white guy with hidden cameras, put a George Bush T-Shirt on him and have him walk down a street in Pakistan. Or, better yet, have him walk down a street in Detroit. I’ll just bet you could get a lot of bigoted reactions…

…* Wear a pro-life t-shirt to a Women’s Studies class.
* Wear a Halliburton company polo shirt to the Kos Kidz annual blogmeet.
* PUBLISH CARTOONS WITH MOHAMMED IN THEM…