Anchor’s announcement raises eybrows

Now-former KEZI lead anchor Rick Dancer read a news story that was both perfectly normal and completely strange at once last Sunday. Dancer told viewers about the latest entrant into the race for Secretary of State. The strange part, of course – is that Rick Dancer is the latest entrant. Dancer anchored the news on the top station in the Eugene, OR market for nearly two decades, before deciding to run for office as a Republican. KEZI devoted three minutes to the announcement and subsequent sign-off. “The standard practice is that the person resigns or takes a leave of absence at least a couple of days before they make their announcement independently from the station,” Poynter’s Kelly McBride told the Associated Press. “The problem is that the news staff, the people who are supposed to be providing fair, distanced, clear-eyed coverage of political campaigns, apparently have been co-opted into one of their own staff members’ campaigns.”