In the midst of all the coverage of the TV news helicopter crashes in AZ in which four people died, few have taken the time to ask: what were reporters doing chasing a carjacker anyway?

The question may seem too obvious to those living in the big southwest markets, like Phoenix and LA, where such chase scenes are staples of local TV. As the BBC report drily notes, “Police pursuits are fertile material for many US TV stations and have proved popular with viewers.” And decrying the give-’em-what-they-want mentality of local news may seem hopelessly naive but really: why send newsmen out to do this job? I would suggest it would be better left to sportscasters but that would be unfair, like asking them to call the action on the greyhounds chasing the mechanized rabbit. Have the scofflaws and thieves ever gotten away on chopper camera? The best you can hope for (and I’m sure many of the viewers who drop everything to watch these pursuits do) is a multiple car collision, ideally one involving at least one police car. It’s kind of like The Dukes of Hazzard except real people get killed.

Rather than decry the viewing preferences of the rubes of America (a fulltime job for some TV critics) or even heap any more scorn on the network affiliates that sent those journalists and pilots up in the air in the first place (a third chopter witnessed the crash and reported it to TV viewers in crash of the Hindenberg terms) I’d like to share some of the blame with the cable news networks that stop their increasinlgy imbecilic daily coverage of dog shows and celebriity scandals to share these “breaking stories” with their viewers.

Here’s a newsflash for CNN et al: There is no story there. Cop-chases-criminal is the man-bites-dog of daily journalism and that you would help risk the lives of reporters who could be covering — I dunno — the local effects of global warming or the plight of working Americans without health insurance by pandering to the gladiator tastes of the Idiocracy implicates you in their deaths.

For those of you watching at home, do yourself a favor: The next time you see a live car chase on TV, turn it off.