If News is Worth Dying for,
Is it Worth Protecting from Conflict of Interest?
First a practical reason. When Ms. Joe and Mr. Denton, News Director Goldberger and a squad of reporters took off for Utah, much of the six newscasts they produced went with them. Bay Area news--even weather forecasts--were displaced in favor of news from Salt Lake.
On the six o’clock news the first night the KNTV team broadcast from Utah, the games had yet to begin. I taped the top thirty minutes of that newscast and found 11.5 minutes were reported from the Bay Area--a little more than half the non-advertising time. But even local reports focused on Salt Lake. Bay Area issues and events were short-changed.
Reporter Sasha Foo described the “big bash” her own station was hosting on Pier 3 in San Francisco. She gave us a sneak preview of a boat NBC3 had rented for the evening which boasted dozens of TV sets tuned to….NBC3. (She neglected to mention that the boat was hired to allow San Franciscans shut out of the Olympic audience because of NBC3’s faint signal to watch the opening ceremony.)
Reporter Jonah Tichenor interviewed four people at a café somewhere in the Bay Area who were offered as evidence of the “Olympic excitement” that gripped the Bay Area. (Characteristically for KNTV, the reporter only bothered to identify one of the four sources who spoke on camera.) Later weatherman John Farley forecast the conditions for Salt Lake, including the 5-day Olympic weather outlook. Bay Area weather? Missing but for a joke that it was “plenty warm inside” the NBC3 boat on Pier 3, from which he reported.
Selling the credibility of the news
The second objection to using news to “leverage” corporate interest is longer-term. It erodes public confidence in the news to know that it was selected not with an eye to public service, but for private gain, in this case to make watching the Olympics (on NBC3) the most newsworthy--and therefore most important--Bay Area event.
The script of the newscast was clearly written with promotion in mind. “Excitement” was the key word. “Don’t miss it!” was implied.
Mr. Denton and Ms. Joe introduced the theme at the top of the hour: “We’re inside the Silver Lake Lodge (in Park City, Utah) tonight to bring you all the excitement of the Winter Olympics, ” read Mr. Denton. “You can just feel the excitement,” added Ms. Joe.
“We can feel the excitement up here in the mountains,” Ms. Joe said moments later in a handoff to reporter Beth Willon in Salt Lake. “It must be overwhelming there.” Ms. Willon, we were told, was interviewing Bay Area visitors to the Winter Games to record their, well, excitement. Only one of her sources was identified as a Bay Area resident, however. (But in fairness, it’s possible a second source, who was not identified, was also from the Bay Area.)
Reporter Tichenor in his report from a Bay Area café about Olympic excitement may have inadvertently got it right. “The hype transcends age groups and cultures,” he said.
Is this news to die for?
What, you may ask, does the news from Salt Lake have to do with journalists dying to tell the truth?
Absolutely nothing.
A memorial service will be held for Daniel Perl at Stanford Memorial Church, Monday February 25, at 4 p.m. All are invited.
