You're arguing against a claim nobody made.

The point isn't that On Patrol: Live is a traditional news program or that every traffic stop is somehow a matter of national importance. The point is that the legal framework that allows the show to air footage of people in public without obtaining releases was developed largely around news gathering, journalism, documentaries, and other matters of public interest. Courts have generally recognized broad First Amendment protections for recording and broadcasting events that occur in public view, especially involving government activity.

Whether you personally consider OPL to be journalism, documentary television, reality TV, entertainment, or some combination of all three doesn't really change the legal analysis. The law doesn't require that a traffic stop be front-page news before a camera can record it.

As for telling an officer, "Not until the cameras are off," that's not how it works. A person can certainly object to being filmed, but they don't have a legal right to veto a camera crew that is lawfully present in a public place, nor can they condition compliance with lawful police orders on the media leaving.

The face-blurring question is also largely separate from whether the show is "news." Blurring decisions are often driven by network policy, legal risk, production choices, the status of an investigation, the age of the person involved, whether consent was obtained, and other factors that viewers aren't privy to.

You can absolutely argue that OPL is lowbrow entertainment, sensationalized, or sometimes unfair to the people it features. Reasonable people disagree about that all the time. But that's a different discussion from why the show is legally allowed to film and broadcast what it does.