Viewers Voice: Monkey story had one man questioning WSLS's judgment

By: Jay Warren | WSLS 10
Published: March 20, 2011

One viewer has a suggestion to improve our 7pm newscast, calling to say, “It is very annoying and it is really hard to understand what the newscasters are saying when they have that music going constantly in the background. You need to leave it because the newscast is fine without it.”

A baby Marmoset had a lot of us in the newsroom and you and home saying, “Ahhhhh.” But, Rob Wilson had a different take.

Wilson wrote, “I am writing to register my dismay with the ‘cute, little monkey’ story you aired. The little monkey is indeed cute -- but it should never be in that woman's bra in the first place. Baby monkeys belong with their marmoset mothers, preferably in the jungle. It is delusional thinking for a human to call herself a "monkey mother" because the baby never saw the inside of her uterus. Please, please exercise some journalistic integrity when you report this sort of story.”

WSLS responds: Thanks for the email. We aired this story because the woman was initially removed from a local courthouse for bringing the monkey into the building with her. That first story generated a lot of viewer interest and we followed up the next day with a human interest story on the monkey and its owner. That wasn't all we covered that day. In fact we also had coverage of the earthquake in Japan with a local angle, the Ten Commandments controversy in Floyd County, a Fact Check about lottery money and Virginia's schools, a deadly car accident, and the indictment of a murder suspect. In the middle of all that, isn't it nice to have a feel good story?

Finally, another viewer was pleased with WSLS’s decision to air President Obama’s recent news conference. She said, “The viewers of Channel 10 are very happy that people at Channel 10 elected to show the president about our preempting other shows today. They showed the president speaking about tsunamis and gas prices. And Channel 7 has elected today to show basketball instead and we are very upset about that. So, I would like for Channel 10 on the news to take a moment of glory and represent the fact that they took time to show what is important and that is our president instead of college basketball and we are very upset.”