“Well, one way of looking at it is that it shows the depth at which local TV news exists,” responds Dan Rosenheim, news director at KRON. Tracey Watkowski, assistant news director at KGO, says the news director at Channel 7 at the time of the California Primary is no longer with the station. She could not defend his decisions, she explains. She adds, however, that “weather gets a certain amount of time and sports gets a certain amount of time unless you have breaking news. It takes a certain amount of time to give a complete weather report.”
Daniel
Webster, news director at KPIX, is on vacation. But veteran political reporter
and anchor Hank Plante responds to Channel 5’s low rating this way: “They
love politics here (in the KPIX newsroom). I’m questioning how you did
your research. I don’t think adding up the number of seconds that we give
it (politics) tells you anything at all.”
“We
cover politics like a blanket,” Plante claims. “We’ve done live interviews
in the newscast with all the candidates. Live, in the 6:30 show! I don’t
think anyone else has done that.” Plante
contends that Los Angeles stations ignore politics, but not the four biggest
San Francisco stations.
Andrew
Finlayson, news director at KTVU, questioned the assumption that political
reporting before an election should be the top priority. “We would argue
that we are not in the business of ‘empowering the political process’ and
that ethically we are instead charged with reporting the most important
issues of the day. In our mind, the issues of the period in question may
have required time on other matters.”
Finlayson
and Rosenheim both chafe at comparing television newscasts to newspapers.
The two media are so different, they argue, that it’s “apples vs. oranges.”
Representatives
of the San Jose Mercury and
the San Francisco Chronicle could not be reached for comment.