[jerhewet]

Mine would be "helicopter shots" when I'm watching the evening news.

I don't want to watch 45 minutes of "live coverage" from a news chopper hovering over a building on fire (or, from recent events in Los Angeles, water being sprayed on some storage tanks) while all of the talking heads try to make it sound interesting and relevant. Or, even worse IMO, a helicopter following a car chase for three hours, from freeway to surface streets and back to the freeway. Or a helicopter hovering over somebody's house for an hour because there are dead people inside.

This is worth 30 seconds of coverage. Tops. Move on to the actual news, please, and if it's worthy of a follow-up when there's an actual conclusion, another 30 seconds to wrap it up.

If I turn on the news and see a helicopter shot, I change the channel.

[iamalizard]

I think that stems from the format. It has to be video so they must show something. Better than a stock footage of a fire or, as South Park did, an "imagine if that school was full of rabbits".

We see the same useless media in thumbnails of text-based news and in the articles themselves with irrelevant stock photos.

Not only is it useless but it makes me consider the site/network less reputable if they're engaging in such attention-grabbing practices that tend to pander to idiots.