Supposedly professional and reliable broadcast information sources, such as NBC’s Today Show and Dr. Oz, have helped unscrupulous scamsters mislead and sometimes rob the ignorant, hopeful and gullible by treating psychics and fortune-tellers as if they were serious professionals. It is irresponsible and reckless, or perhaps testimony to the low level of education and reasoning ability of television news producers, that so many of these alleged journalists  yield to the temptation of booking fake masters of the supernatural during airtime that is otherwise devoted to facts, or some version of them. While CBS’s “The Mentalist” performs a public service by presenting a hero who doesn’t hesitate to declare his former profession a fraud, it is hard-pressed to counter the corrupting effects of previous shows like “Medium,” which enhanced the dubious reputation of one psychic, and “Ghost Whisperer,” as well as  cable’s TLC, which made the “Long Island Medium” a reality star.

Chicago’s WGN deserves an ethics razzing for falling into this trap, and providing a forum for a fake psychic to hawk her book in a live on-air segment on its morning show. Luckily, however, the news team persuaded the woman, Char Margolis, to attempt a cold reading of anchor Robin Baumgarten, and when she failed spectacularly,  Baumgarten’s co-anchor Larry Potash delivered a deft coup de grace.  Well done, WGN news team!

The fact that the segment turned into a wonderful YouTube lesson in how phony these predators are cannot retroactively excuse the unethical decision to have a fake psychic like Margolis on the news in the first place, but if there was ever a perfect example of how a poor ethics can have good results, this is it:

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Pointer: Soap Box Rantings

Source: WGN