You know those news teasers they run during prime-time programming? “Coming up on ActionNews at 10 – can we expect more snow for your morning drive?” Or, “the Broncos cut a big name today – tune in to News5 after NYPD Blue to find out who’s looking for a new team.”

These things annoy the hell out of me, and probably have the same effect on everybody else with an IQ in the triple digits. I mean, I understand why they do it. If you can’t pull viewers you go out of business, and you don’t really help your ratings position if you give away the big news for free. Can you imagine this one:

“Nothing really major happened today, so you can go ahead and turn the TV off as soon as ER is over.”

So the businessman in me gets it perfectly, although the journalism guy in me wants to take a stick to the ratings slaves who have turned “broadcast journalism” into one of our culture’s funnier oxymorons. I tolerate it, for the same reasons I tolerate things like gravity and air.

But Tuesday night Denver’s Channel 2 News (a WB affiliate) crossed a line – it might be a faint line, but there’s still a line between pretending to be real journalists and accepting that you’re The Jerry Springer Show.

You may have seen the story on CNN about the FedEx truck blowing up on the interstate in Missouri. Great pix – fire trucks, packages strewn all over the damned place, etc. So that night, coming out of a commercial break for something we were watching, we get one of those damned teasers. The anchor said something to this effect: “A FedEx truck explodes in Missouri. Was it a simple accident or was it foul play? Tune in…..”

Here’s the problem. It was a simple accident, and WB2 knew it. There was no suggestion at all, at any time, from any of the law enforcement officers and investigators on the site, of foul play (read, terrorism). It was made clear from the get-go that, despite how spectacular it all looked, that it was a simple, run-of-the-mill wreck.

The truck was cut off by another vehicle and went off the road, rupturing the fuel tank and sparking the explosion, said Sgt. Ed Ensminger of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Another official said the fuel tank ruptured when the truck’s trailer struck the post of an overhead sign…. Cpl. John Parrish of the Missouri Highway Patrol said foul play does not appear to be a factor. “We’re certain this was – although it may not seem so – your typical traffic crash,” he said. (from CNN.com)

This was the report from the scene, shortly after the wreck, and the report never changed. So that means there was no reason for any news agency to suggest, to hint, to imply, to intimate that it was “foul play.” Basic journalistic ethics.

But WB2 did it anyway, in a cynical attempt to jack the ratings by playing on our front-of-mind fears about al Qaeda loose in the Homeland. If you think violence and mayhem sells, let me tell you what, bub, terrorism is pure fucking gold. And so I’m sitting around wondering, if they’ll do this, what won’t they do?

“Tune in at 10 and we’ll tell you whether or not there’s an armed child rapist rampaging through a large Denver suburb.” (There’s not – and that’s good to know, isn’t it?)

“Has Osama bin Laden been captured? We’ll give you the latest in 30 minutes.” (He hasn’t, and that’s a perfectly valid answer to the question.)

“Coming up on News2 after the show, has yet another member of the Bush family been busted for smoking crack?” (No, but it sure could have happened, couldn’t it?)

Why not? From the perspective of journalistic credibility (humor me here, okay?) these are just as legitimate as the teaser WB2 ran Tuesday night. When it comes to the integrity of a news agency – even a TV station – there are things you don’t do. There’s a baseline for honesty, and while you can have more or less cred above that line, everything below that line is the same. It doesn’t matter how far into negative numbers your integrity rating goes.

And once it’s gone, it’s hard to get it back. Remember the Elian Gonzales debacle? Remember that famous photo that CNN.com ran, where it looked like the stormtrooper had an assault rifle leveled at the kid’s head? Uh-huh, but if you saw the whole photo you know that the gun wasn’t pointed at sweet little Elian, it was pointed at the guy holding the kid, who was hiding in a closet, and who the hell knew if the hand you couldn’t see held a pistol? But the unaltered picture made a less dramatic impression than the cropped image. And you know what? I haven’t forgotten, and won’t for a long time, that CNN did that, and I’m not the only one. Now, every time I see a photo on CNN.com, I catch myself looking around the borders, looking for signs of manipulation. CNN pissed away some credibility that day, and now a lot of us don’t quite trust them anymore.

What WB2 did is as bad, maybe worse. And from now on, I’ll be flipping over to 9News after the show is over.

Tune in next blog, where I’ll let you know if I went over to the WB2 News Director’s house and caught him pleasuring himself while watching the Anna Nicole Smith Show.