Two articles in the Washington Post have made big splashes in the TV news business in the past week or so, and they are both flawed in significant ways, so i feel compelled to comment.
First, the estimable Ted Koppel decries the undeniable fact that the TV news business, over the last couple of decades, has become a profit-driven enterprise. Because of this, ‘real news’ on television is dead, causing great sadness to Koppel, and, it would seem, everyone who values a free and open society.
article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html
The elephant in the room, however, is Koppel’s role in creating the very system he now decries. Koppel came of age in an era in which newsmen like him could become wealthy. Really wealthy. Why? Because they were the best at what they did, and they were in a business that was making money. With all due respect to Ted, and he is due a lot, it is disingenuous for him to simply neglect owning up to the fact that he was part of, and profited from, the very system which he now says is causing the ‘death’ of ‘real news.’
In many ways, the modern era of TV journalism began with Roone Arledge, the legendary president of ABC News, who reigned from 1977 to 1998. Roone built ABC News into a powerhouse by hiring, developing and promoting news ‘stars.’ The shows became vehicles for these stars, rather than pure news programs. At ABC News there was, by the early ’90s, the so-called Magnificent 7 — Roone’s stable of news stars that had begun making lots of money for its parent company, Capital Cities. They were an impressive group. In addition to Koppel, they were: Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Sam Donaldson, David Brinkley, and Hugh Downs. Roone also wrestled the hugely profitable Good Morning America away from the entertainment division in ’93-’94. He got Brinkley from NBC and put him on Sunday mornings, where he ended up dominating (and making lots of money) for years. After putting Barbara in primetime on 20/20, he launched PrimeTime Live (Sam and Diane) and Turning Point (with Diane, Barbara, and Meredith Viera).
Thus, ABC News became the envy of the broadcast journalism world.
This was all before Disney bought ABC News, by the way. Capital Cities, now largely forgotten, had long since recognized that news could equal profit, and Dan Burke and Tom Murphy, who ran the company, were willing to pay stars like Jennings, Koppel and Sawyer top dollar to keep it that way. The pressure to make money pre-dated Disney’s purchase of ABC, but it did seem to intensify thereafter.
Koppel recounts a visit to Nightline’s Washington offices by Michael Eisner, who deeply offended Koppel and his staff by comparing Nightline’s journalists to Disney’s ‘cast memebrs’ who worked at Disneyworld. Koppel vowed to fight any possible cuts to his staff tooth and nail. He indignantly quizzes Eisner, mentioning several names and asking the CEO if he had heard of any of them. He hadn’t. They were correspondents and producers who risked their lives, he said … did Goofy do that? At the time, Ted was making, I’d guess, at least $5 million a year.
Many of us at ABC wondered then, if Ted feels so passionately about this, how about taking a pay cut? Say, agreeing to have his salary reduced to $2 million — and pouring that money back into the show? Sure, Disney likely would have balked at such a suggestion, but we didn’t see any of the anchors stepping up to try to inject some sanity into the news division’s balance sheets by taking less money when their contracts came up. I’m not even saying they should have — after all, if the market can bear it, they should get theirs. Capitalism pure and simple. But to complain about the fact that news divisions being asked to be profit centers for public companies (whose loyalty by law must be to its shareholders) is not a little hypocritical.
The other Washington Post article was about checkbook journalism, which was an exercise in faulty conflation and astonishing naivete for a media writer for a major newspaper.
see the article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111606539.html
Paul Farhi calls the move into ‘checkbook journalism’ by mainstream media outlets as some brand-new phenomenon … another sign, presumably, of the decline of true journalism. Seriously Paul? This is a new trend?
No, this has been happening for many, many years. The broadcast networks have long made shady deals like the ones described … like paying for the use of personal photographs, and ‘coincidentally’ getting the interview along with the payment. Doesn’t make it right, but the nets have long been completely disingenuous about this, and anyone paying attention knows this already.
The second problem with this article is that it equates paying for interviews, either directly or indirectly, with paying for video or other newsworthy material. Farhi uses Gizmoto’s purchase of the lost iphone 4 as an example of this ‘questionable’ practice. Problem is, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with paying for video or other material, as long as the provenance has been established, and said material isn’t stolen, etc. Certainly, after 9/11, the networks spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying video from amateur photographers who captured the attacks on their personal cameras. This is common practice. In the age of ubiquitous cameras and so-called ‘citizen journalism,’ it will become more and more common. And it is totally different than paying for an interview, where the person being interviewed might be motivated to slant their testimony for $$.
