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Need something shot, produced, edited,
reported, uplinked/downlinked in SoCal? JDnewsie Productions: 818.766.7122 jdnewsie@aol.com www.jdnewsie.com |
A media critique... and then some!
Friday Letters - why does Mia Lee have the giggles?....questionable lead stories in San Diego. Coming Monday - a well known LA reporter is calling it quits, and is Mindy Burbano benefiting from a double standard at KTLA? Links to Recent Issues 07-23-01 Monday's OTR 07-25-01 Wednesday's OTR 07-20-01 Friday's OTR Send your opinions to BRUIN74@aol.com. |
To get on the OTR email reminder list, email me at BRUIN74@aol.com. |
BIAS IN FAVOR OF CONDIT?
There is just something so odd about some Republicans. No matter how badly a Democrat gets ripped in the news, it's never quite good enough. Somehow if Gary Condit were a Republican it would be different, and certainly worse. Bill Clinton was lambasted by the news media like no president since Nixon, but either that doesn't count, or it would've been worse if he were a Republican. Of course they have no proof because there can be no proof. There was only one Clinton, just like there was only one Nixon. I heard talk show host Larry Elder (who is libertarian) say yesterday that if Condit were a Republican, he would be toast. But I never heard Larry define "toast." How different could it be if Condit had a R by his name instead of a D? Members of the other party are already calling for him to resign. A poll of his district shows they don't plan to re-elect him. Larry King seems to do a show on Condit every day now. The media have gone nuts over this story (except Dan Rather). And once again, if the media are so biased against Republicans, why did they ignore the problem of Bill Thomas's alleged affair with a lobbyist last year? No doubt if Bill were a Democrat then his case would be more evidence of media bias. Too bad he's a Republican, and as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a pretty powerful one.
OTR reader Bob Bennett said he couldn't understand my logic about when it is relevant to refer to a Congressman's party in a story like this. My rule there would be the same rule I believe in when it comes to mentioning race or ethnicity; only when it is relevant. For example, if Republican Bob Barr says Condit should resign, then Condit's party is relevant, since it is a member of the opposition who wants him to quit. If a Democrat calls on him to quit, his party affiliation would be relevant then too. If Condit were the House minority leader, then his party would be brought up more often because of his high leadership position. But if Condit is just a lying, wife-cheating Congressman, what difference does it make which party he is in? If you want to mention that is a Democrat, or a conservative Democrat, that's fine...but it generally doesn't add anything to the story. After all, by now we all know that lying cheating politicians come in both parties. As I said before, there are times where media bias may be a legitimate issue to explore, but looking for something here merely takes away credibility for any real such instances. And to any new readers...I didn't vote for Gore or Bush.
UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF JOURNALISM
I've really been proud that this site has been able to grow with the help of non-media people. Obviously, I like to have both types reading. One thing that I figure all people understand is the basic principle of trying to tell both sides of a story. I am finding out that I am wrong on that.
I've gotten several emails commenting on Wednesday's item, in which I criticized Mike Boguslawski for doing a clearly biased story. All of the emails are from the homeowners who Boguslawski supported in his stories. I think it's clear they realize he took their side too. For example, in an email from homeowner Jerry England to his other supporters he wrote "Ron Fineman's On The Record' web site at http://www.ronfineman.com/ is giving heat to CBS for supporting us. Please let him know how you feel."
My concern is emails from some of those England wrote to who don't seem to have a clue about fair reporting. They are so emotionally involved in their issue, they actually write as if I am against them! In fact I never addressed the merits of their cause. Never! All I did was advocate giving both sides of the story! Can you imagine getting criticized for that? I find it a little frightening that people can get so wrapped up in their own causes, that they don't seem to even understand what I wrote. Though after exchanging emails with Margie Beeson, she suggested that I should criticize LA TV news for not taking a close look at this zone change issue. I think we all know that local TV news does a poor job of being a local government watchdog, and so on that she may have a valid point. On the letters page, I've included some of the letters from zone change opponents, along with a long letter from England explaining the zoning dispute from his point of view, as well as a response from City Councilman Hal Bernson on this issue. I realize that those not interesting in a Chatsworth land use dispute may want to scroll through it, but I know it matters a lot to some of my new readers, and unlike KCBS, I want to have both sides. To any new readers, please head the Letters section on the menu.
OUR FRIDAY INTERVIEW WITH JOSH MANKIEWICZ - PART ONE
As I'm sure many of you know, Josh is a correspondent with Dateline NBC, and also used to report for KCAL news in Los Angeles.
(1) OTR -
Are you someone who always wanted to be a reporter, or did you have other
ideas in high school and college?
Josh
-"
I grew up around politics and journalism, so I guess it's not that surprising
that I ended up becoming a political reporter. By the time I was in high school,
I was fairly focused on something involving either one or the other, and I
started working for ABC News while I was still in college. When I graduated in
the mid-70's, every liberal-arts grad --including me-- wanted to be either
Woodward or Bernstein. I worked briefly at a suburban weekly paper, then went to
back to ABC as an assignment-desk assistant [Stone Phillips was the dayside
editor, Katie Couric was also a DA]. I walked into the ABC Washington Bureau in
August 1975, and it felt like home."
(2) OTR - So where was your first on air reporter job, and what was it like? Did you
find that it was different than what you expected?
Josh - "My first on-air job was at WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, DC, in 1980.
I was working as an off-air reporter in the ABC Washington Bureau covering
Congress, and CNN was just going on the air. Since they were brand-new,
established TV reporters weren't willing to leave their jobs, so CNN was hiring
producers and researchers and making them correspondents. I told ABC I was going
to leave, and my boss [Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame] made an intriguing
counter-offer: go to WJLA for a year, then come back to ABC as a correspondent.
Of course I jumped at that, and I spent 14 fun-filled months at channel 7,
covering fires, Federal workers, and the always-fascinating Mayor Barry. Dow
Smith was the news director, and he was smart and funny and extremely patient
with me.
I was already living in DC, of course, so it was a huge advantage not to have to
go to some smaller market where I didn't know anyone or my way around...but the
downside was that I never got to touch the gear, edit, shoot, or screen a tape.
And, I had to make all my mistakes [and there were many] with both my parents, my
brother, and all my friends watching.
The station had finished third --consistently-- for some time, so the addition of
an earnest network producer to the reporting corps probably didn't hurt. In fact,
it probably didn't make any difference at all. However, this was a time when
things like writing and reporting ability still counted in most local newsrooms,
and they certainly counted with Dow. So one more advantage was that I got to
watch some real pros in action--the quotable John Corcoran among them. I wish now
that I'd stayed there longer, but when ABC came calling after fourteen months, I
went to Miami as a correspondent, and just about vanished from the airwaves."
(3) OTR - So how did you come to work at KCAL-TV in LA? And what was it like when you
were there?
Josh - "I was working as political reporter for WCBS/2 in New York. This was in 1990
and people were still actually *watching* channel 2, and when Larry Perret
first approached me about coming back to LA to work for this
non-denominational start-up that was going to do three hours of prime-time
local news, I said no, I was staying in New York. Fortunately, David
Goldstein and Jane Velez-Mitchell [both WCBS alums] persuaded me to re-think
that decision, and I came out for an interview in May of 1991. It was
thrilling to be back in the city where I'd lived as a child and where I felt
so comfortable, and I thought KCAL would be something new.
I wasn't wrong. It was as unlike the culture of white-shirt,
cover-the-press-conference local news as I could possibly have imagined. Bob
Henry and Sylvia Teague encouraged everyone to think differently about how we
did our stories, and Larry --whose management style is more like performance
art-- is a very charismatic newsroom leader.
It did turn out to be a fascinating place to work, particularly because,
unlike a lot of newsrooms that have a sort of permanent government of people
who have survived a dozen news directors, format changes and GM's, everyone at
KCAL was brand new to the place and very few were jaded. The result was a
tremendous energy and for a long time, the highest morale I'd ever seen in a
newsroom, culminating in our truly memorable coverage of the 1992 riots.
Being political reporter in LA was certainly a wake-up call after six years of
what was, on paper, the same job in New York. But the similarities existed
only on paper. At Ch2, I was the lead story probably two or three nights out
of five each week...at KCAL there were plenty of days when Team Larry didn't
even want a piece. The perception that 'politics is boring' was much harder to
fight here than it was in New York. Add to that the fact that many young news
producers see themselves not as journalists, but as programmers, whose job is
not to inform but to attract an audience, and whose loyalty is not to the
viewers, but to the numbers.
That said, working for Larry did make me think differently about how to put a
piece together, and the mayoral campaign of 1993 was, even by New York
standards, a pretty good story. And the absence of the daily publish-or-perish
ethos sometimes meant you could spend a little more time on something, rather
than having to crank out something tedious to fill up the 5. That kind of
longer leash paid off when we caught Joy Picus sleeping during City Council
meetings, leading directly, I think, to her loss to Laura Chick in 1993.
After covering the Senate and Presidential races in 1992 and the Mayor's race
in 1993, the L.A. political landscape seemed to be shrinking, so when I was
offered a chance to be part of a newsmagazine Fox was starting called "Front
Page", I took it."
(4) OTR - When you watch political coverage in LA these days, whether it was the
last mayor's race or other stories, what do you think about it?
Josh - "Well, it's pretty dismal. When I arrived in LA in 1991, all four
network-owned stations had their own full-time political reporters, as did
KCAL. Today, I think John Schwada at KTTV and Dave Bryan at KCAL are the
only ones left, and Dave's part-time. The other stations don't bother
covering politics unless they can't possibly avoid it, or it's the final
days of a campaign. The feeling that 'politics is dull' seems to have won
out here as it has in other markets, and viewers are the big losers in that.
The result is that Dick Riordan managed to serve two terms as Mayor without
ever fielding a tough question. The difference between the political-beat
press in LA and NY is the difference between an attack dog and a lapdog. In
New York City, Mike Hernandez would have lasted 48 hours after admitting
he'd bought cocaine with his City Council salary. He'd be hounded the way
Gary Condit is now. But the stations here completely let Hernandez off the
hook. Dick [tough enough to turn LA around]Riordan stood by while not just
one, but two NFL teams walked out of town, and no one on TV gave him the
pounding he deserved. No one truth-tests candidates TV ads, and no one
compares campaign promises with campaign contributions.
This year, all the stations covered the last-minute dust-up over the
anti-Villagairosa ads by Jim Hahn, but no one talked about why the ads were
so damaging: because they were essentially true, and because Villagairosa's
extending himself for a contributor made him look like an old-school
politician, not the new breed of leader he was selling himself as. And no
one I heard asked why it is that Latinos turn out in such tiny numbers
relative to their share of the electorate. And what insignificant coverage
there was of the Mayor's race this year far exceeded the time give to the
City Council races, some of which were pretty interesting.
In short, there are a million fascinating political stories out there and
just about no one's covering them. And some of them are even pretty good
television."
(5) OTR - I think your analysis is right on the money. But how do you convince GMs and
news directors that they have a responsibility to be a government watchdog, and
that it can attract viewers if it is done well?
Josh - "I'm convinced that eventually it will happen; I'm just surprised that it's
taking so long. The low road is so well-traveled in local TV news; you'd think
someone would try taking the high road just to set themselves apart. So far,
that doesn't seem to be happening in LA. It's not happening elsewhere very much
either--one notable exception being CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago, which spent a
decade driving viewers away with meaningless fluff and then tried for eight
months to do a serious high-road newscast. And when the numbers hadn't changed
enough after eight months, instead of tweaking the on-air product [which was
very dry], they abandoned the whole idea, essentially saying, "See? People
don't really want serious news."
I think that logic is hugely flawed; there are plenty of examples throughout
network news [Nightline, 60 Minutes] and even in local [WFAA, WIS, KCRA] that
serious treatment of serious stories can win you an audience. And believe me, I
like a good car chase as much as the next guy. I'm not arguing that local
news, or even the political coverage inside a local newscast should be the
journalistic equivalent of castor oil. Covering politics shouldn't mean reading
aloud from the Federal budget, and the best newscasts are entertaining as well
as informative. But you tell me, what would viewers rather see, another story
about Madonna's latest video, or a piece from City Hall on how Mike Hernandez
helped fund LA gangs by supporting the drug trade with his taxpayer-supplied
salary? They're both highly promotable, but one of them you'll hear everywhere,
and the other you won't hear anywhere other than the station that invests a day
in covering it.
I think viewers are bored with celebrity news, with pointless titillation, and
with chasing the police blotter. And they're telling us precisely that in every
successive rating book, as the share of people watching local news drops again
and again. The gap in Los Angeles between what's really happening out there and
what makes the lineup of the 4,5,6, 10, and 11 is getting bigger every day and
eventually it will threaten all of us.
There's no question that there's a huge audience that's turned away from local
news. In LA, at least, they can be won back because no one is serving them.
There are plenty of reporters in town who know exactly how to do it; all
that's required is the commitment of managers to ignore the N'Sync concert and
send the troops out after something way more significant."
OUR FRIDAY INTERVIEW WITH JOSH MANKIEWICZ
CONTINUES NEXT WEEK...in which Josh will tell which LA local
news he likes to watch, and which reporters he most respects.
POLL REMINDER
This week I'm asking how you'll spend your tax refund, and for Californians, I'm asking who your choice is for our next governor. Please head to the poll section on the menu.
OTR ONE YEAR AGO THIS WEEK (7-24-01)
YOU CALL THAT A LEAD?
In a city where even a relative of a celebrity getting in trouble makes news, I'm sure that to suggest it wasn't much of a story would be a waste of cyber ink. But at least, let me suggest the story of Kareem Abdul Jabbar being arrested last week for driving under the influence was overplayed. KABC and KCBS led with it at 11pm. Both had live reporters on it. Jason Carroll reported that they were still piecing things together. Piecing what together? That police saying it involved marijuana, instead of booze? I think the phrase "piecing together" implies the story was a lot more complicated than it was. He was arrested around 7:30pm. He was cooperative, and released a couple of hours later. Yet over on the KCOP 10 o'clock news, fill-in sports anchor David Rose reported that it was BREAKING NEWS. How can a DUI arrest two and a half hours earlier be 'breaking news?' Once again, hype wins out over accuracy.
YOU WON'T BELIEVE
This is a cliché that has got to go, but it never will, because it so well symbolizes what it wrong with local news. It is a sensational phrase, and it rarely lives up to what it suggests. This weekend, KCBS-TV told us we would not believe who the passengers were in another one of those police chases. It turns out the woman being chased had with her a big rag doll and a teddy bear. Can you believe that? Yes, I can too. But in the modern playbook of local TV news clichés, it has to be up there with "murder mystery." It seems like in LA these days, every other dead body which is found is a murder mystery. Yeah, life in LA is one big Mickey Spillane novel. And you know when there is a murder mystery on the news, a neighborhood is always in shock. Because it is a quite neighborhood. Apparently there are no noisy neighborhoods, or if there are, they just don't make the news. You might say these clichés are a good journalist's worst nightmare.
NO MORE GRAVITAS
It was all over the weekend political talk shows this weekend. George W Bush would take Dick Cheney as his running mate to give his campaign "gravitas." Some pundit said it and then it was like "follow the five-dollar word leader." If they did a remake of Wizard of Oz in Washington DC, no doubt a political light-weight would have to join the cast, so he could be in search of gravitas. I went to a website called Gravitas Inc, and found that "gravitas" has to do with seriousness of purpose. For some reason, the word is not in my American Heritage Dictionary. Of course it also doesn't have "my bad" or "eye candy." I'm beginning to think I need a new dictionary, with more gravitas.
MORE TONIGHT ABUSE
On Saturday, KCBS-TV reported "there is word TONIGHT" that Dick Cheney had changed his voter registration from Texas to Wyoming. Apparently Channel 2 gets its word from the Pony Express. Because the news was out as early as Friday afternoon. Sometimes, newscasts can get away with fooling viewers into thinking old news is current by using "tonight" in a less than honest way. But when it's a story with so much national interest, a lot of people are likely to catch on to the scam.
HOW ABOUT AN OBJECTIVE SURVEY?
I am on the right wing mailing list. NRA stuff...Bill Clinton is the boogeyman...you name it, I get it. Last week I got a poll from The American Conservative Union, and one question really jumped out at me. It asks, "Do you think Mrs. Clinton is more corrupt, about as corrupt or less corrupt than her husband?" Not corrupt is NOT a choice. However, the survey is willing to list "not sure" as an answer. Then at the bottom of the page it says "We aim to use the results to show Mrs. Clinton that most Americans strongly oppose her far-left socialist vision for America." If they know the results before people fill out the surveys, why bother to waste money on the postage?
SKYDIVING MIA
KCAL promoted this story about reporter Mia Lee skydiving. I thought, why is her name in the title? Is SHE the story? Turns out, yes she was. I don't think there were too many frames of video that didn't include her. Video which included Mia talking to the camera, video which was voiced over by.... Mia. Mama Mia! But the real problem came with her jump. She did a tandem jump. She DID NOT jump on her own. So what is the big deal about a reporter strapping themselves to a skydiver when he jumps. It takes no real skill. I once covered a guy who did the same thing, and he came out of a wheel chair. I'm sure even a tandem jump takes a certain amount of courage. But if you're going to promo a reporter skydiving, I would expect that person would be soloing.
EMMY NOMINATIONS
I was very pleased to see the West Wing get all of those nominations. You may recall last fall, I predicted the show could win an Emmy for best drama. Now at least it's halfway there. I also couldn't help but notice that Ally McBeal wasn't nominated for best comedy this year. I'm not surprised. Seems like the show has turned into a bit of a self-parody. Last year it was a show I didn't want to miss, yet this year, I'm sure I missed far more episodes than I watched. I guess the show just got too weird. I am happy to see Peter MacNichol nominated for best supporting actor. He may be the best thing the show has going for it. I hope he wins.
CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE
On Politically Incorrect a couple of weeks ago, David Brenner was defending Bill Clinton by saying something to the effect that he would rather have a president who's doing it to an intern, instead of doing it to the public. It's a good line, but also one which Woody Allen used in Annie Hall when he was talking about President Eisenhower. I think Brenner should've credited Woody. I know jokes get ripped off all the time. But all he had to say was "As Woody Allen would say......" Good thing for Brenner that he doesn't work for the Boston Globe.
OTR ON THE ROAD
As this web site evolves, it seemed like a good idea to offer my services for speaking engagements at colleges, service clubs or anyone else interested in the OTR gospel. Of course one of the great advantage to speaking in person is that you get far few typos. If you check the OTR On the Road page on the menu (Netscape users CAN now access it too), you can learn more. You can also read what some well known OTR readers have to say about this web site. If you are interested, you can email to OTROnTheRoad@aol.com.
YOUR OPINIONS
They are an important part of OTR. Please send them along to BRUIN74@aol.com. Unless you say otherwise, I'll assume it is for publication.
OTR IS PUBLISHED
EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY Letters to the
editor are updated Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Ron's disclaimer: Like all reporters I have opinions. I do the best I can to make sure that nothing I say here has any effect on my objectivity in covering stories.
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