Newscasters Take Hard Look At Their Business
A documentary on the state of television news today paints a withering portrait of an industry seduced by sensationalism and willing to sacrifice quality for the bottom line.
The eye-opening aspect of The History Channel’s “Embattled Witness” is its sources: some of the biggest names in the broadcast news business.
Listen to “Today’s” Katie Couric describe how she feels trying to sweet-talk a tabloid celebrity into an appearance on her show.
“Sometimes I’m thinking, ‘I want to hurl,”’ she said.
Or Lesley Stahl of CBS concede that she’s occasionally pressured to talk on the air about a story she hasn’t thoroughly reported. “It’s frightening,” she said.
Or veteran CBS newsman Morley Safer: “There is generally a lowering of standards about what we see on the air.”
The cranky journalists aren’t quite what producers had anticipated when they set out to prepare the final installment of the cable network’s six-part series on broadcast journalism, which airs Thursday at 8 p.m. EST.
The documentary traces how ratings-obsessed local news programs and new “tabloid” television shows like “A Current Affair” combined to change the way news has been covered by the network news divisions.
The traditions of journalism, the narrator grimly intones, are “under siege.”
Twenty years ago, the big networks would have ignored people like Tonya Harding, John Wayne Bobbitt, Joey Buttafuoco and Robert Chambers. Now they join in on the story.
Robin Dorian of “A Current Affair” said it struck her how the landscape had changed when she saw Connie Chung and Diane Sawyer chasing after Harding.
“Inside Edition’s” Deborah Norville, who used to host the “Today” show, offers a damning assessment.
“I am in the singularly unique position of having been at two major networks on their biggest shows, and now working in syndication,” Norville said. “I have ridden both ponies’ backs. And I can tell you there’s not that great a difference.”
Local news is depicted as so dependent on ratings that focus groups essentially decide what is covered. The result is a focus on more lurid tales - “If it bleeds, it leads,” is the credo - at the expense of topics that are more important but make for eye-glazing television.
These local stations “refuse to cover the news. They cover what I would call distractions,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw said. Government news isn’t covered unless there’s a scandal.
“It’s not about journalism,” he said. “It’s about filling up air time. They don’t make the investment in strong reporting.”
Hearing Brokaw talk may bemuse some viewers. His nightly news program has recently become No. 1 in the ratings with an approach that de-emphasizes government news in favor of longer lifestyle pieces. Some traditionalists dub it “news lite.”
“Embattled Witness” concludes on a hopeful note for the future, although the only evidence it seems to offer is the natural swing of a pendulum.
“I sense that we are now coming back from a dangerous precipice where we might have gone over and done the funny farm, and just done the three-headed cow and Elvis at the supermarket … coming back to a more steady, more sober look at events,” said ABC’s Sam Donaldson.
Donaldson’s attitude, though, hints at the most nagging aspect of this documentary.
“Embattled Witness” effectively illustrates the trends in television news but does so from a pedestal. It’s hard to shake the paternalistic tone - we know what kind of news is best for you and you’re not getting it.
It’s a dangerous attitude and one of many reasons why consumers are looking beyond traditional sources for their news.
Diane Sawyer puts things in perspective. The ABC News star has ridden many ponies herself, from probing investigative pieces to that excruciating interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.
“I think we can call it good, bad, we can think about it,” Sawyer said. “Won’t make any difference. It’s about human nature. In the end, we’re saying people shouldn’t be interested in what people are interested in.
“But they are,” she said.