KRON’s
Former News Director Looks Back
What’s Right and Wrong with Local TV News
And Some Ideas for Reform
Outside the
newsroom, it’s about money. Corporate
profits are tied to the ratings. Manager bonuses are tied to meeting
corporate-dictated profit goals. TV stations are a business and have a right to
make money, but how much is enough?
A major
market anchor recently wrote of his company hitting profit margin numbers and
adding to 5 billion dollars in gross revenues and then added: “The television
business in this country is completely out of control. If the public were to ever see the amount of
money being taken out of these cities and stations, they’d be amazed.”
Much of that
profit is expected from newsrooms.
Here’s a
part of a recent ad for an ND in a major market. “…Other key duties include
... strategic planning and positioning
for audience growth, recruitment and retention issues.”
That,
quietly, has been part of the ND’s job description for the last 15-20 years,
but it’s the first time I’d seen it in a public ad.
A newsroom
can win awards, do substantive journalism, and fulfill its public service
obligation, but if the audience does not grow, is not recruited and retained,
the ND is looking [for a job] elsewhere.
A newsroom
in Philadelphia recently lost a ratings lead it had held for a decade. The pressure was so great to recapture it,
that the ND violated a court order not to follow jurors for interviews. Her explanation was that she had to break
some news.
The president of TV People, the only firm representing
ND’s and TV managers, said, “the economic pressures are so great and beyond
a news director’s control, but they are the first to get
To maintain
profit margins, newsroom staffs are reduced, but ND’s are asked to provide more
news...some of it on their own stations, some of it on others, some of it on
cable. All are what’s
known as
alternative revenue streams. You can
make an argument that reduced staffing inhibits substantive news. Additional
newscasts without increased staffing is self-explanatory.
The emphasis
on ratings and profit results in journalistic compromise after journalistic
compromise and marginalizes a newsroom’s efforts to provide the community
with the quality information it needs to keep its freedoms, to be self-governing
to make informed choices and to make sense of the world.
Is it
possible to bring profit and quality news more in line? Scores of journalistic
watchdog and non-profit organizations are trying. Most appeal to the
journalist, to journalism educators, and to some extent, the viewer.
Grade the
News hopes to educate viewers as to what they should expect and demand from
local TV news and steer them to the station that best provides it. Under the
GTN scenario, stations failing to provide quality news will suffer both a
ratings and revenue loss.
Stations
respond to loss of revenue. They don’t
respond to a logic that says invest in more people in order to provide quality
news or to idealistic arguments that say do it because it’s your obligation.
Many critics
describe TV news as in a state of crisis and the only way to solve it is by
applying crisis solutions.
One way is
by challenging a station’s license.
Under the Communications Act of 1934, the airways are public property.
Commercial broadcasters are licensed to use the airways. Use is based on whether the broadcaster
serves “the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”
The last
major successful challenge of a station’s license involved The United Church of
Christ, a Jackson, Mississippi TV station, and the Federal Communications
Commission.
The Church
argued that the Jackson station failed to serve the public interest,
convenience and necessity of its large African-American community. In a struggle that began in the late fifties
and lasted twenty years, the church won out and in the process forced the
Federal Communications Commission to write equal opportunity regulations requiring
broadcasters to recruit and hire minorities and women or face the loss of their
licenses.
Most critics
agree that it would be difficult today to challenge a station license. They say the Communications Act of 1934 was
rendered toothless by the Nixon and Reagan administrations. They also say the
FCC, created to act as a regulator for the public, acts on behalf of the
broadcaster instead.
So, other critics
see a need to reform the broadcast industry entirely.
An article
titled “15 Steps Toward Media Reform” can be found on the internet at www.thirdworldtraveler.com.
That same
web site contains excerpts from the book Take the Rich Off Welfare,
which lays out arguments for why broadcasters should pay for the licenses they
now get for free. The book suggests the
money go into the national treasury. This approach may not improve the news,
but it does pay the public for use of its airwaves.
Ralph Nader
makes similar arguments in an interview published on www.zmag.org/zmag/ articles/feb95barsamian.htm
License
challenges and other attempts at broadcast reform can be arduous, complex, and
last for decades. Are they worth
it? Consider what’s at stake: Reputable
surveys conclude that seventy to eighty per cent of the public gets its news
from television news and only television news.
Alan S.
Goldstein has been news director at KRON, assistant news director at KPIX, NBC
network news bureau chief in Tel Aviv, Israel and has won numerous awards
including the Columbia University Golden Baton for Best Documentary. He made
the remarks above at a salon held at KQED on December 10, 2001.
