Springer-Marin Squabble Par For TV News Course

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on the local news scene as gutsy and startling as what I saw the other day, when a Chicago newswoman quit her $1 million-a-year job over issues of credibility and hyped news.

It’s not that journalists are any more or less principled than other professionals in the quest to do the right thing. But the case involving co-anchor Carol Marin of WMAQ-TV, the NBC flagship station in the Windy City, certainly is one for the history books. And it’s one for journalism education, too, where, strictly from a pedagogical point of view, the outrageous and extraordinary are viewed as requisite elements of news.

Take a pricey TV anchor, a TV talk show host who regularly dwells on sleaze, a television station that’s had it up to here with the status quo - and you’ve got ingredients for a show stopper, which, arguably, made the Marin resignation big news. Not so much because a high-profile, million-dollar employee is involved. But because station management exercised its prerogative to lure more viewers by bringing in some equally high-profile outside help from a TV talk show that often appeals to prurient interests.

Marin will argue that the station’s move is all part of a business going to extremes, using whatever means necessary to blur the line more between credibility, entertainment and news. She’s right. And so is her management, always blessed with the right to shore up TV news ratings, no matter how sagging or strong.

For the record, Marin abruptly quit during her TV newscast a few days ago because she didn’t want any part of the arrangement which brought infamous tabloid talk show host Jerry Springer to her station as a news commentator.

This made her front page news in Chicago newspapers. In addition local radio talk shows chimed in on the story and commentators took sides as if the city was at war.

As if this high drama were not enough, Springer himself abruptly resigned his commentator’s role after less than a week on the job. The strong public backlash apparently proved too much for him.

Marin has toiled for the past 11-plus years for Chicago’s perennially No. 2 news station. By most accounts, she is to Chicago’s local TV news what Walter Cronkite two decades ago was to a national TV news audience. She is a highly respected journalist.

There’s little doubt Marin’s WMAQ-TV bosses were out to knock off the competition. Local commercial TV stations throughout the country are in an important ratings battle this month - the May “sweeps” - that will help determine advertising rates for the year, so high-priced talent like Marin can get paid.

What rubs Marin and other TV newspeople the wrong way, however, is that talkmeister Springer, who once dabbled in TV news, has crossed over to a genre which, in the view of many news purists like me, offers no return.

In the nationally syndicated tabloid program that bears his name, Springer seems more comfortable with shows about pimps, prostitutes and transvestites than he does in commenting on the news. Quite a leap for an often scorned TV personality, whose resume includes being a former Cincinnati mayor.

Not more than a month ago, I got a really good feel for the kind of garbage Springer doles out on his daytime program when one of my journalism classes was examining TV talk shows. The class overwhelmingly labeled Springer as the king of trash in daytime talk.

Springer, of course, had claimed the whole flap between Marin and his short-lived job was much ado about nothing. He accused the popular TV anchor of, among other transgressions, being forced out by WMAQ-TV - and using his new commentator role as a ruse to conceal her alleged imminent dismissal.

I don’t know all of the ins and outs of broadcast news matters in America’s second-largest city. But I do know this squabble over WMAQ-TV will hardly ease the public’s nagging questions about electronic journalism and television’s constant meshing of almost anything to generate interest in news.

Both Marin and the TV station were right in their resolve. The station has a right to make a profit, no matter how controversial - but legal - its source. And an employee has a right to go along with management’s directives - or find happiness in some other line of work.

For the time being, I suspect throngs of supporters will continue to rally behind Marin while holding the station in contempt. You see, television has a way of leaving this kind of imprimatur on the viewing public, no matter how effective, inept or controversial its TV stars may be.

Somehow, I don’t think broadcast journalism’s pioneers nearly 50 years ago expected things to work out this way. But then, television news hasn’t always exactly followed a script.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fred Davis Washington State University