Re: Nice Planet 5: Insert Catchy Title Here
Here's an honest question for you, OP. Over the course of your career, were you ever told by more liberal station chiefs or editors to distort your stories (or else)? Or was your era different? Is the perceived 'MSM' bias a product of the cable news outlet era that began with CNN, and progressed to two networks that seriously do have slanted opinion journalism (liberals have MSNBC, conservatives have FOX)?
Nowadays, it seems we're at the point where anyone with an Internet connection and a modest advertising budget is able to setup an op-ed site with comments and forums for folks that espouse the same opinions to circle-jerk each other. Conservatives have Drudge Report, Freerepublic, and Politico, liberals have Daily Kos, HuffPo, and Raw Story. People can choose the 'news' they want to believe, and it makes the 'MSM' network outlets seem increasingly irrelevant, much to the detriment of the actual facts.
Never. I never even had a discussion with any of them on the subject of content or perspective. I worked very hard to avoid any hint of bias. Let me give you an example. When Ben Nelson was finishing his second term as Governor in Neb. he made his first run for the senate. Magically, during that campaign, Ben (whom I know and like) became much more available to us. If we had a question about the daily special at Sapp Brothers truck stop, Ben would give us some sound. Under those circumstances, I made sure our news department wasn't suddenly up to the gunnels with "Governor Ben Nelson" stories, that were of zero newsworthiness. Similarly, I made sure our people referred to him as "Ben Nelson" in stories having to do with his senate campaign against Chuck Hagel. In stories about that campaign, he wasn't the governor, he was the Democratic candidate for the senate.
On another occasion (not having to do with Nelson/Hagel) I left a reporter with written instructions on how I wanted a story covered. The instructions were: we either have sound from both sides or sound from neither. The next morning, he left a report with sound from only one side. I fired him (he was already on shaky ground, that's why I had to leave him written instructions). This same reporter, covered a story about a Republican gubernatorial candidate's tax plan, by getting sound from Ben Nelson! Journalism 101 would require sound from the guy whose plan we're reporting on and not the guy from the other party. The only justification for Nelson sound would be if you had sound from the guy who issued the plan, his opponent in the primary and Nelson. All we had, however, was Nelson sound. Unfreaking acceptable. And unfreaking professional.
Generally speaking, local newsrooms try to balance coverage. However, the trick bag we can get into is playing favorites with our sources. If a guy is available and generally has something to say, we tend to want to go back to him. Reporters are on deadline. They usually have more than one story to cover. And the guy who's always available is gold. The problem is over reliance on one source can be a kind of bias (depending on the stories and what he says). You need as many reliable sources as possible. At a minimum so it doesn't sound like the newsroom is some clown's PR department. It's always good to have lawyers, doctors, engineers and other professionals available to be your station "expert." In Omaha, I also had a very good relationship with the police chief--had his cell and home numbers. We didn't cut them any slack. But we always had a response from the top. Police departments these days, tell their cops not to talk to the media, under pain of death.
Mainstream media bias (particularly in TV) goes back as far as I can remember. After Nixon lost in '62, ABC ran a program called "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon," (just a tiny bit premature as it turned out) which featured an interview with communist spy Alger Hiss. During the '64 campaign, CBS news' Daniel Schorr did a report from Germany talking about Barry Goldwater visiting "Hitler's old stomping ground, Bertschesgaden." During the siege at Khe Sanh, all of the MSM were full of reports comparing that engagement with Dien Bien Phu, which of course is where the French got their butts kicked and pulled out of Indochina. The one difference? B-52s. Khe Sanh never fell. And the NVA suffered an enormous defeat. Several divisions wiped off the map. But you wouldn't know it based on MSM reporting. And there were no national media outlets back then to balance that tripe.
Although I only watch them for "wall to wall" coverage, the cable networks do a service by getting stories out there. So to bloggers and the new media. There are more viewpoints for us to consider. Some are off the wall. Some are not. But the days when the vast majority of Americans get their news in one half hour broadcast at the same time each night from only three sources (all of whom get
their coverage plans from the front page of the NYtimes) are gone. And we are better for it IMO.
The mistake you're making here, I believe, is the notion that an expanded media world necessarily means a "detriment to the actual facts." The 3 networks, the Times and WaPo, just to name the worst offenders, haven't got exactly what you'd call a sterling record when it comes to reporting the "facts." To them, some "facts" are more important than others. Network television newscasts
are irrelevant. And newspapers, too, for the most part. Having more sources of "news" puts the burden on individual citizens to be better consumers. The burden on individual outlets is the same it has always been: do your very best to get the right stories right. And if you can get them first, so much the better.
One thing local media try to do is "localize" a story. Case in point: Newsweek (remember them?) did an article about gangs in the military. We thought we'd check with Offutt AFB to get their perspective. What started out as a one time story with one source, blossomed into a week long series with multiple sources that won an award from AP.
In local news there are "A" stories (crash at the local airport, death of the governor, fire that kills kids at an orphanage, etc) that are always going to be covered and always in depth. It's the "B" stories that can make the difference. The phrase is "enterprise." If you can enterprise an angle or a source or a perspective (like we did with gangs in the military), and if you're the only one who's got it, you're golden.
