Tag Archives: broadcast journalism

media news

‘Like members of the family’

alison and adam

A USA Today article spells out a grim truth about the latest tragedy that has gripped the American public.

Alison Parker and Adam Ward, two broadcast journalists who were slain on live TV this week, were like “members of the family.”

That is why their deaths in Roanoke, Va., has body-slammed the community they served.

Think about that.

Television news viewers invite the people who deliver it into their homes. The reporters and camera people who provide the information are in viewers’ homes because the viewers want them there.

Thus, when they’re taken from viewers — particularly in such a graphic fashion — the public reacts perhaps a bit more viscerally than it does to reports of other tragic events.

Do no misunderstand my point. I am not downplaying other tragedies as being less worthy of public grief. The Sandy Hood Elementary School shooting in Connecticut — in which 20 precious children and six educators were gunned down — drove millions of us to tears … and one American in particular, President Barack Obama, couldn’t restrain his own personal grief while commenting on it to the nation.

Yes, there are many other events that affect us deeply.

The deaths of two journalists who were just doing their job on what was supposed to be a “routine story” and who were transmitting their story into people’s homes at the very moment of their death just hits us so very hard.

They hurt us so very deeply.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/journalist-killings-like-deaths-in-the-family-for-viewers/ar-BBm980G

 

local news, media news

Sensing an odd disconnect

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I picked up the phone this weekend to call a good friend.

We worked together at the Amarillo Globe-News. Not long after I quit my job — after being “reorganized” out of the position I had occupied for nearly 18 years — he resigned to take another journalism job back east.

As we visited, he told me about this challenge and that challenge he was facing at the paper where he’s working.

Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: I did not feel connected in any meaningful way with what my friend was telling me.

Wow! How weird is this?

It’s been a month shy of three years since I left daily print journalism. It defined me in the many people’s eyes for more than 36 years. I toiled at four newspapers: two in Oregon and two in Texas. My career didn’t take me to too many stops along the way. Several of my friends who are still practicing the craft have made many more stops along the way than I ever did.

Still, for 36-plus years that was what I did. I had some modest success over that time and I am so very proud of what I was able to do, the places I was able to see, the people — famous, infamous and just plain interesting — I was able to meet.

Oh, but the disconnected feeling I’m getting these days is sending me a clear message.

I am glad to be gone from my last stop along the way. I was an old-school reporter and editor when my employer informed me that he planned to make “radical changes” at the newspaper and that I didn’t fit into those plans. I’ll admit that it hurt hearing such a thing. And, yes, I went through some grieving as I sought to collect my thoughts and plot the rest of the journey my wife and I would take.

Three years is a long time. Then again, it does fly by quickly, especially when you’re occupying your time doing other things. I’ve managed to do that. I’m staying quite busy writing blogs for two local broadcast TV stations. So I haven’t been sent out to pasture entirely. I’m also helping a friend produce a weekly newspaper in eastern New Mexico.

The disconnect lies with the daily grind. I no longer have to worry about answering the bell every single day. I’ll leave that to others who are young and vigorous enough to overcome the obstacles that emerge constantly to bring added pressure to an already pressure-packed job.

I’m glad my friend still relishes the challenges that confront him every day. As for me, I’ve got other things to do.

national news

Anchor's problems mounting

It’s beginning to look as though the reporting of a controversy — more than the actual controversy — well might doom the career of a once-trusted broadcast network journalist.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has stepped away from the cameras for an unspecified period of time, while the chatter continues about the circumstances of his made-up story about getting shot down — allegedly — in Iraq in 2003. His helicopter wasn’t hit by rocket fire, as he has reported for a dozen years and the network is launching an investigation into the circumstances of Williams’ “misremembering” the events of that day.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/debate-brews-over-whether-williams-can-survive-controversy/ar-AA9bgGx

Other questions about other stories have emerged.

And now we have media experts speculating aloud about whether Williams should lose his job, whether he should stay, and whether he’s lost the trust of viewers who depend on their TV journalists to tell the truth all the time.

According to The Associated Press: “The real difficulty for a news organization, or a reporter, is that once you’ve made one misstep, it’s really hard to earn (trust) back,” said David Westin, former ABC News president. “You can. But it takes a lot of time. It takes a long period of time with proven performances. It takes a long time of getting it right.”

Here’s the issue, as I see it: All the intense publicity and scrutiny and all the questions that have risen from this matter have damaged Williams’ reputation, perhaps beyond repair. Suppose he emerges from the examination squeaky clean. How does he recover from the millions of snarky comments, the late-night comics’ jokes and not mention the photo-shopped videos that have gone viral showing him landing on the moon, storming ashore at Normandy or planting the flag atop the hill on Iwo Jima?

The nation has made him a laughingstock — and not necessarily because of what has been alleged in the beginning, but because of the reaction to it.

Williams may have become as much a victim of social media as he has of the wounds his ego have inflicted on his career.

 

national news

Williams story taking on life of its own

A wise person once said that you know you’re toast when the late-night comics start making fun of you.

Welcome to the world of wee-hour funny stuff, Brian Williams.

His story about “misremembering” a shoot-down in Iraq and now his reporting from Hurricane Katrina is taking on a life of its own. It’s turning into a monster that, if it’s left still kicking, is going to knock down the walls of credibility that formerly surrounded the NBC Nightly News anchorman.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11526453-148/nbc-news-anchor-brian-williams

This is not a pretty sight to watch.

It well might be that the Katrina story inflicts an even deeper wound in Williams’s reputation.

He reported during the storm in 2005 about seeing “dead bodies” floating in the French Quarter — despite the reported fact at the time that the Quarter suffered hardly any flooding. He told viewers about ingesting floodwater, causing dysentery. Others on the scene have doubted that as well.

What in the world is happening to this individual’s once-stellar journalism career? He’s always been thought of as one of the more thoughtful, everyman, honest newsmen in the business. Williams has exhibited none of the erratic behavior that Dan Rather did when he took over from Walter Cronkite at CBS. He’s been rock solid, steady — and at times self-effacing, such as when he makes appearances on late-night shows to talk about stories he’s covered and the foibles he’s endured.

The so-called misremembering being shot down in Iraq by itself stretches credulity.

Add to that now the reporting of deep flaws in his Hurricane Katrina coverage and you start drawing the picture of a broadcst journalist who’s found himself in some deep doo-doo.

This is not fun to watch.