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Houston Media Fun

I read Richard Connelly's latest in print over breakfast at the 59 Diner this morning, and see that Romenesko has featured it today as well. The local media are an easy target, but this bit on loopy Channel 13 (home of Marvin Zindler, of Best Little Whorehouse fame) was especially good:

It was pretty much a run-of-the-mill health report on Channel 13's 5 p.m. news April 17.
Reporter Christi Myers told viewers of a possible breakthrough in curing what's popularly known as Bubble Boy disease.

As she provided details, film clips were shown of David Vetter, the Houston-area kid who suffered from SCID, or severe combined immunodeficiency, until his 1984 death at the age of 12. Vetter became famous as "the boy in the bubble," the kid whose story was turned into a John Travolta made-for-TV movie.

As the KTRK report rolled, we saw clips of Vetter in his plastic environment, laughing, playing and looking somber. And then, suddenly, the musty film was replaced by a decidedly newer-looking clip.

There was Vetter -- or someone -- in a cartoonishly large round bubble. He looked to be about 20 years old.

That's strange, we thought.

It got decidedly stranger as the person in the bubble took a step off the curb �and got plastered by a bus that was speeding by.

With the blink of an eye, it was back to more gauzy '70s-era film of Vetter.

It happened quickly enough that you had to ask yourself whether you saw what you just saw. But there was no doubt -- someone at 13 had inserted a clip from last summer's alleged teen comedy Bubble Boy, a critically reviled slapstick comedy that bombed at the box office.

The movie's release last August led Vetter's mother to call for a boycott. "I feel it's outrageous and an insult to David's memory," she told the Houston Chronicle.

Not to a mysterious someone with access to the video equipment at KTRK, though. Whoever it was, he didn't agree with The Boston Globe ("Bubble Boy Is Rude, Crude and Formulaic") or the Chicago Tribune ("cruel and tasteless").

"It was an embarrassing error that was corrected immediately," KTRK news director Dave Strickland says. "I apologize to the family and those offended. I have taken measures to make sure it does not happen again."

No word on whether he plans to rent There's Something About Mary for an upcoming report on hair-care products.

Sad. His section on Fran "Drunk Driving" Blinebury and his tortured prose is worth reading also.

[Posted at 10:54 CST on 04/25/02] [Link]

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