A reminder of the problems with morning news shows

I am back to write something after yet another long delay. So here are my thoughts about the morning news shows this morning.

I was watching NBC's Today Show this morning, and they announced Ed Smart, father of kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart, would be interviewed at the start of the 7:30AM portion of the show. I was flipping channels and went to CBS' Early Show. CBS is also airing at the same time an interview with Ed Smart. So I flip to ABC's Good Morning America at 7:30AM. And guess who was being interviewed on that channel? Ed Smart!!

How does the same guy appear on all 3 of the major morning news programs at the same time? Unless this is like the President of the United States doing a live press conference being broadcast to multiple networks, there is no possible way for a person to be in 3 different buildings at the same time. Since Ed Smart was wearing the same tie in all 3 interviews, all 3 of these interviews were probably filmed on the same day which was today. But only one of them was probably actually live, while the other 2 networks thought and did pull a fast one on the viewer by making it look like their interviews with Ed Smart were live too.

Now I am calling out for organizations that set rules for responsible media reporting to do something about these kind of situations. The public should have the right to know which of the 3 interviews are actually live and the other 2 that are not live should have a disclaimer on the screen during the entire interview that it is taped to avoid the confusion as to which appearance is actually live at that moment.

This should easily be corrected. Why it hasn't already been, is a complete mystery to me.