TheAntiMedia.com

Flagging station tries reinventing TV news with home-video tech

2005-12-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

At KRON reporters, videographers and editors now do all three jobs at once
By Michael StollPosted Dec. 13, 2005
Newsroom or Internet cafe? KRON's "video journalists" cluster around work tables digitally editing their own stories on deadline -- a sharp break from the past, when everyone had specialized jobs. (Photo by Tim French & Kelly Korzan.)
If you've been watching KRON Channel 4 lately you may have noticed that it looks a little less like standard local news fare and a little more like MTV's original reality show, "The Real World," neither amateur nor totally professional.
Sometimes you might see a smart story, but be distracted by a hand on the screen or a disembodied voice. Other times you notice great video, but thinner reporting.
You're not imagining things. This season the San Francisco station has embarked on a radical -- and some would say risky -- journalistic experiment. It is the first major-market TV newsroom in the country to supply nearly everyone with hand-held digital video cameras and laptop computers, allowing them to produce stories all by themselves.
KRON hopes that low-cost techniques perfected on reality shows will bring the once high-flying station back to both journalistic excellence and competitiveness in Nielsen ratings. But critics say forcing journalists to become "one-man bands" who report, shoot and edit at the same time will lead to shoddier journalism, and eventually leaner news staffs.
Union balks at mixing reporting, editing and photography
One KRON union sees the mixing of TV journalists' specialized tasks under the "video journalist" system as threatening.
In September, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists complained to the National Labor Relations Board, charging that Young Broadcasting was negotiating in bad faith by canceling reporters' contracts and then changing their job descriptions unilaterally.
A separate union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing the camera operators, has already signed a contract approving the VJ system, after a KRON offer to give its members hefty raises. Andy Baker, broadcast director of AFTRA San Francisco, said the company sees the changes as a chance to divide and weaken the unions. Television reporters in the San Francisco Bay Area typically make $110,000 or $120,000 a year, while photographers earn about one-third less, he said.
"You then end up with two unions bargaining for the same group of people, and it's a race to the bottom because the company will play each against the other," Mr. Baker said.
Chris Lee, KRON's news director, did not respond to a follow-up e-mail asking for a response to the union charge. A hearing in the case is scheduled for March.
KRON consultant Michael Rosenblum sees the union objections as unpersuasive. The adherence to the old rigid job descriptions is to him "part of the old Soviet mentality." Within 10 years, all TV will be done this way, he said. "The economics make it inevitable." -- MS
The collapse of three distinct jobs into one delights the station's tech-savvy consultants for the same reasons it alarms some union officials and veteran journalists. KRON reporters, who rarely used to touch a camera, now are shooting their own video every day. Many photographers are reporting for the first time, which is sometimes apparent in video that ignores obvious story angles.
Cameraman Charles Clifford described himself in a blog entry about his retraining as "a guy who hasn't done any real writing since college."
The reorganization has eliminated most editors. While a producer is supposed to review every story, outside observers worry about the loss of quality control.
"It sounds great, and I'm thrilled that it's happening in our backyard so we can watch it," said Robert Calo, associate professor at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and longtime network TV producer. "But we have to be on the lookout for some of the unintended questions about what's happening. You need an editor. Somebody else needs to say, 'You need this; what about that?' There's no substitute for that."
Technology made the reorganization possible. The equipment is finally small, cheap and good enough for broadcast: lightweight digital cameras, do-it-yourself editing software that's already being used in junior high schools, and the proliferation of Internet cafes where reporters can log in to send video to headquarters on deadline.
The immediate results may look a little rough, but the station's management promises that in the long run, it will be able to do better journalism with the same number of people. Before the change, KRON fielded no more than a dozen reporter-photographer news crews each day. By early next year, said consultant Michael Rosenblum, the station will deploy 50 independently operating "video journalists," also called "VJs."
"We're going to have three or four times the number of cameras on the street as any other TV station," said Chris Lee, the station's news director. "That's going to allow us to invest in stories that don't pan out -- but also to go for stories that could pay off big. We're going to have the flexibility to practice journalism in that way, and the other stations in the market won't. You'll see the difference."
So far, the difference is difficult to discern. Many of the VJ stories this fall seem to have been assigned only to test the new equipment -- light features that aren't done under time pressure. Of the clearly identifiable VJ stories, a few problems emerge, both in journalism and production quality:
With fewer video editors, solitary VJs often don't have the time to incorporate archival footage with new video to give stories context.
The news is peppered with easy-to-cover entertaining trivia, such as stories about the dangers of deep-frying Thanksgiving turkeys, the San Francisco Fire Truck Tour or tarantula mating season in a state park. (The not-so-urgent news bulletin: "While tarantulas might have a bad rap in movies, these small creatures are actually quite mild-mannered and harmless.")
The former reporters' lack of visual expertise sometimes make the video distractingly bad. That was the case at an anti-death-penalty rally at San Quentin Prison, when a tree branch obscured rapper Snoop Dogg's face as he spoke.
The technical revolution is supposed to take KRON beyond its recent reliance on contextless mayhem. Thus far, there's little indication that shift has occurred.
On one Saturday evening in November, for example, the broadcast featured nothing but violence for the first eight minutes:
A death in a police beating in Oakland with a tearful mother.
A murder investigation in San Leandro.
Nightclub goers stabbed in Oakland.
Two men killed in a car crash in Novato.
An elderly woman injured in a crash at a gas station in San Mateo.
Tornadoes in Iowa.
The first anniversary of Scott Peterson's death sentence for the murder of his wife. (The last piece, by reporter Don Knapp, was apparently such an exemplary VJ story that the station ran it virtually unchanged two nights in a row.)
More enterprise reporting ahead
The VJ training process has been turbulent, but worth the trouble, Mr. Lee said. He said that like many other stations, KRON has not been producing stellar journalism in recent years, but the VJ system allows more self-initiated, in-depth enterprise reporting. Reporters used to be generalists, covering one or two events each workday, he explained. But now some will specialize on particular beats or topics, and have several days to develop the typical story.
Shopping vérité: From behind the camera, a KRON VJ hands a shopper a pair of pants at the grand opening of the H&M clothing store in downtown San Francisco.
Eventually he hopes to increase coverage of important societal, economic and political trends, and become less reliant on press releases, car crashes or "games" that all local TV stations employ these days to distract viewers from their owners' newsroom cost cutting.
"We've got this bag of tricks where we say, 'Hours ago, something behind me happened,'" Mr. Lee said. "It's a trick when none of us has any more reporters to cover stories. There's a body of techniques that everyone in local news uses, probably invented in 1980. Teases that say, 'The tap water is killing people in the area, and we'll tell you where later.' Viewers don't appreciate being treated like that."
Broadcaster's falling fortunes
KRON admittedly has little to lose in retooling its news operation. Six years ago, when the family that owned the San Francisco Chronicle also owned KRON, and the station enjoyed a profitable affiliation with NBC, it was among the Bay Area's most watched news stations.
Since then, KRON's premier 9 p.m. news broadcast has fallen to fourth place, compared with the market share of other stations' late evening newscasts.
Even Young's sharpest critics acknowledge the company has been in financial trouble ever since it concluded its purchase of the station in June 2000 for a reported $737 million, and lost its NBC network affiliation at the end of 2001 to KNTV. The share price of Young Broadcasting has plummeted to $2.51 this week from more than $45 when it first bid on KRON in 1999. Financial analysts at the time argued that Young took on far too much debt to acquire KRON; the deal was the highest purchase price for any television station in U.S. history.
High-tech gospel
The quotable evangelist for the VJ system, New York consultant Michael Rosenblum, says he is sparking a global transformation of the TV news business. In recent years he has spread the gospel of high-tech video news reporting to the British Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America, Dutch public television, and stations in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Japan and elsewhere.
Back to school: Cameraman Charles Clifford learns also to be his own reporter and editor. (Photo courtesy Charles Clifford.)
In the United States, many stations in smaller TV markets have for years combined the job of reporter and videographer using standard shoulder- or tripod-mounted Beta-format video cameras. The multitasking saves stations money, but the distraction of doing multiple jobs can compromise the technical and journalistic quality of the news. NY1, the all-news local cable channel in New York, started that way in 1992 with Rosenblum's help.
KRON's VJ system uses smaller cameras and digital editing software to streamline the process. The cameras retail for less than $5,000. A souped-up laptop costs under $2,000. The video-editing software goes for less than $200 on eBay. These replace analog tape editing booths that cost $50,000 each, and cameras costing upwards of $20,000.
The equipment makes it possible for one person to do the job of three. Reporters can even work from home.
Smarter technology
Every generation of new equipment challenges journalists to distinguish the technical tasks from the essential skill of storytelling, said Henry Breitrose, founder of the graduate program in documentary film and television at Stanford University.
"The technology increasingly has evolved to the extent that the intelligence necessary to operate the equipment is in the box, not in the operator," he said. "I think this has changed the notion of journalism. It's not something you do with typewriters. It's not even something you necessarily do with ink on paper.
"Now whether it's humanly possible to attend to reporting and images and editing on extremely tight time deadlines, that's another story."
Young Broadcasting, which owns KRON and 10 other stations around the country, hired Mr. Rosenblum this year to restructure both KRON and WKRN in Nashville, Tenn. He said his newly trained video journalists at both stations not only learn quickly, they enjoy their jobs more because they have "pride of authorship."
I realize what they're doing is different. I'm not a good mix in this environment.
-- KRON reporter Vic Lee, who is moving to KGO next year.
"The old days -- it's over," Mr. Rosenblum said during one his recent visits to KRON, where he and three other trainers taught classes in the new system for nine weeks this fall. As he roamed the KRON newsroom, he told of how he exploded the cubicle culture, replacing reporters' desks with wide-open tables where reporters could plug in their laptops and go to work.
'Brainwashing' the newsroom
At first, Mr. Rosenblum said, he wasn't allowed into the newsroom at all. But a few weeks into his stay his influence grew. A fast-talker dressed in a techno-bohemian uniform of thick black-framed glasses and a blazer over a black T-shirt, Mr. Rosenblum boasted that the VJ class, which takes six 12-hour days, is his form of "brainwashing." A few months into the conversion, even Mr. Lee found himself using a few of Mr. Rosenblum's mantras, such as "Local news sucks."
Mr. Rosenblum would not disclose his consulting fee, beyond saying, "Messiahs don't come cheap." He says he now spends most of his life on airplanes shuttling from one project to the next. While running his consulting business based on the VJ news model, he's used the same cinéma vérité methods to produce low-cost TV reality shows such as "5 Takes Europe" and documentaries such as "Trauma: Life in the ER."
"All of a sudden I find myself in enormous demand," he said. "All I'm doing here is introducing the most obvious thing in the world. Thankfully, there's a lot of resistance. That's how I get paid."
"It's like the Borg," he joked, referring to the futuristic race on Star Trek that views cybernetic enhancements as inevitable. "Resistance is futile. Get assimilated into the collective."
With that kind of talk, it's no wonder that the change to the VJ system has worried some old-timers. Several veteran news staffers said they saw Rosenblum's influence as one sign among many that the station has lost its bearings, and is grasping for gimmicks to boost revenues at the expense of public service. Others wonder publicly whether the station is sincere in its desire to improve, or merely wants to use technological efficiency as an excuse to slash staff.
Top talent leaving
Citing the ongoing effects of newsroom disinvestment and lowered standards, some of the station's most experienced journalists have left the station this year.
Far and away: A VJ report on an anti-death penalty rally at San Quentin Prison indicates that Snoop Dogg is onstage, but misses his face and most of his words.
With 33 years on the job, reporter Vic Lee (no relation to Chris Lee, the news director) is the station's ranking editorial employee. He is planning to leave KRON in January for KGO Channel 7, saying he no longer recognizes the culture of the newsroom where he spent most of his working life.
"I realize what they're doing is different," he said. "I'm not a good mix in this environment. I'm leaving because KGO is giving me a great offer. ... The changes here are dramatic."
When he joined KRON, it was one of the best stations in the country, he said. "Heavy on investigative reporting. One of the largest investigative teams. At one time we had three or four investigative producers. We did a lot of stories that really mattered and made a difference."
When KRON was king
Several longtime staff placed the journalistic heyday of the station during the leadership of Mike Ferring, the news director from 1981 to 1987.
"KRON at that time was a distant third, so we had to do something, and what we chose to do was put on good news." Mr. Ferring recalled. "We tripled the audience for it in that period of time. We increased staff as well. I think we peaked at about 175 people, including the Washington bureau, Sacramento bureau and the East Bay bureau.
"The business has changed a lot since then," said Mr. Ferring, who got out of TV news years ago and now makes his living selling wristband IDs to hospitals. "It went through a period of time, stretching through the mid-'80s until now, where the bean counters put a lot of pressure on stations to increase productivity and become more efficient. As a result, news departments increased the amount of time they were on the air, and decreased the amount of time spent reporting."
He remains skeptical that one-man bands can work as well as traditional TV newsgathering techniques: "One of the charms of having a reporter and a photographer working as a team is that you have two sets of eyes on a story. If you merge those two, it's a rare individual who has all the skills in abundance. Not to mention that you eliminate the teamwork, and your chances of coming back with something special, something high quality, is reduced."
'A tragedy'
Reporter Greg Lyon, who worked at KRON from 1977 until this year, recalls the Ferring era wistfully. In 1982 he and two other KRON journalists spent almost half a year with a group of Vietnam veterans in a psychiatric facility as they came to grips with symptoms that were being diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. The hour-long documentary, "The War Within," won a prestigious Columbia-DuPont award.
"There's just no way in hell that anyone there would be able to do anything close to that now," said Mr. Lyon, who is now working on a freelance documentary projects for the National Geographic Channel and the History Channel.
"Overall, it's a tragedy what happened to that station," he said. "They lost NBC after the first year. They haven't had much to sell. They did not seem to be prepared for the actual event when NBC left. What they did have lined up was universally crappy -- cheap dating games and infomercials. The infomercials pay the light bills, but they sure don't pay the staff."
The journalism suffered noticeably, he said. Managers assigned stories straight out of the morning newspaper. If it was already in print, it was a sure thing that a reporter wouldn't come back at the end of the day empty-handed.
Mr. Rosenblum, who apparently has spent hours responding to doubters on Internet discussion forums, wrote in a posting that his VJ system was designed explicitly to improve the journalism.
"All too often the stories we select are chosen because of convenience, not because they have any inherent news value," he wrote on a TV news photographers' site, B-roll.net. "Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to change the equation. To make our news proactive. To define the news agenda instead of just responding."
Mr. Lyon said he hopes that's the case, but doesn't trust the company not to use the increased efficiency as an excuse to downsize.
"I expect that over the next year you won't see as many VJs as you do today, and that Young Broadcasting will whittle the number to the minimum needed to get the newscast on the air."
News Director Chris Lee said emphatically that's not KRON's plan. He says he's even looking to hire more staff who get the VJ thing. "I firmly believe," he said, "that we'll come out of this a far better station journalistically."
http://www.gradethenews.org/2005/kron.htm

Real Fake News or Fake Real News ?

2005-10-18T03:38:00.000-07:00

http://homepage.mac.com/paulanrichards/chotoday.wmv

KRON - got their number?

2005-10-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

KRON's managers are now consulting a numerologist to try to figure out why their station is tanking. The numerologist has told them that "1001"--their address--is an unlucky number. So they added the digits "552" after the 1001 on the outside of the building on Van Ness Street.

The future of reporting

2005-05-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

Naples Daily News Written by Dave Taylor

The future of reporting: The latest rumor about the future of television reporting is a big mistake. KRON-TV in San Francisco is reportedly pursuing the use of video-journalists for its newscasts. The station will use one-man bands to give viewers broader coverage of the Bay area.
Currently, large and medium size markets in the country send out two-person crews to cover news. There is a reporter and a photographer. While the reporter gathers the facts for the story, the photographer shoots the accompanying pictures that will later be put together as a package.
In a cost conscience environment, expenses can be reduced by almost 60 percent by providing one-man band VJs who shoot video and report. The reasoning is that in a 40-person newsroom, reporters may have to share five or six cameras. If you have twice as many cameras, some station managers think you can cover much more news at a reduced cost.
While this idea may have some merit, the quality of the reports by VJs will not be as high as having a two-person crew. It can be done, but when you are shooting video and trying to report, something has to give — and usually that is attention to detail.
Once this VJ idea happens in a large market, it is only a matter of time before it funnels down to smaller markets.

Bottom-line pressures erode local print and broadcast journalism

2005-05-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

By John McManusPosted May 1, 2005

What happens when media companies squeeze newsrooms to improve the bottom line?
What's cheap to report and sensational to read or watch increasingly displaces what's expensive to cover - or uncover -- but may advance public understanding.
More experienced reporters are replaced by fresher faces who work for cheap but may not know the difference between a lawyer's allegation and a court's verdict.
As reporters struggle to meet increased story production quotas, the thought and research going into each story falls.
Last Wednesday night two of the Bay Area's most distinguished reporters described conditions in their newsrooms at a salon in San Francisco organized by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
What I object to is calling what we're doing in local TV news 'news'
-- Greg Lyon
"What I object to is calling what we're doing in local TV news 'news,'" said Greg Lyon, one of the most familiar faces on Bay Area television news. Mr. Lyon quit KRON Channel 4 several months ago. In 27 years with the station, he won local, national and international prizes for his reporting, including a duPont-Columbia award, considered equal to a Pulitzer Prize in print journalism.
Sean Holstege, who covers regional transportation and terrorism for the Oakland Tribune and Alameda Newspaper Group, said the paper no longer routinely covers Alameda County government because editors fear boring readers with "process" stories. Reporters are written up if they don't meet story quotas, he said. And unpaid interns are now covering the kind of stories staff members used to.
Despite those hardships, Mr. Holstege pointed out, over the past two years managing editor Kevin Keane has managed to free reporters to produce prize-winning stories.
Sean Holstege of ANG Newspapers
Mr. Holstege has won several of those prizes, including a James Madison Award from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists this year and the California Newspaper Publishers Association's First Amendment Award in 2003. (For example, items #2 and #8 in our bouquets.)
Entertaining news more profitable
As television news budgets are cut, said Mr. Lyon, "the contract with the public has changed fundamentally." Now "entertainment is more important than journalism.
At KRON "Scott Peterson rated a full-time reporter for months," he said, "but there was no one to cover the environment."
In the 1980's, he recalled, KRON was among the most respected stations for news in America. The station had a special projects team and an investigative unit, he said. Even general assignment reporters --- who cover "spot" news like fires and shootings -- could devote an entire day to reporting one story. Ad sales people were banned from the newsroom.
Now the teams are gone and reporters are expected to produce as many as three stories a day, Mr. Lyon noted. The emphasis on investigation and depth has given way to "quick hit" stories that are cheap to produce, but much less informative.
Hiring younger, cheaper journalists
I don't know of one journalist who thinks that's a news story.
-- Sean Holstege speaking of the Scott Peterson coverage
Experienced journalists, Mr. Lyon said, are not having their contracts renewed in favor of younger, cheaper staff. Editors are being replaced by technology. As a result, he said, one young KRON newswoman recently reported as fact a lawyer's allegation that a bicycle was unsafe. She then tried to demonstrate that when the bicycle's front wheel was improperly secured, it fell off.
The role of consultants has also increased, he said, ordering reporters to walk while on camera to satisfy younger audience's desire for movement. He has covered stories, he said, that were included in the newscast simply because they appealed to a certain demographic, such as "18 to 35 year-old women in Contra Costa County."
KRON, he said, may be facing greater economic pressures than other local stations, largely because it lost its network affiliation (with NBC) in 2000. But he believes what's happening now at Channel 4 will befall other San Francisco stations in coming years as they lose audience to alternative media on cable and the Internet.
Going for the easy story
Describing his experience at MediaNews' Alameda Newspaper Group (ANG), Mr. Holstege also decried the emphasis on what's easy to report and dramatic. Of the Scott Peterson trial, he said: "I don't know one journalist who thinks that's a news story." But it got repeated play, he said, "because it's easy."
ANG discourages stories about the process of government, he added, because surveys and focus groups tell them people prefer lighter news. He cited a recent series on "Best bathrooms in the East Bay." In contrast, he noted, some of the best stories come from digging through the process of government.
Layoffs two years ago have hurt the already thinly staffed ANG papers, he said. "Can we do without," he said, has become the mantra of the newsroom. As a result, he added, the paper relies more on stories from wire services than it used to.
Salaries at ANG are so low, he complained, that "I could triple my salary as a flack [spokesperson] for the school district." As a result, he estimated, 30% of the staff has left and been replaced in each of the last six years.
The SPJ salon was held at the London Wine Bar in observance of Journalism Ethics Week.
KRON News Director Chris Lee responds
I concur with Greg that local news has changed enormously over the last twenty years. Twenty years ago, cable channels weren't a major force. Today, they take half the audience. Clearly, that's a significant change in the economics of the business. We feel those changes at KRON 4, as do news departments across the country. I think Greg is lamenting that KRON 4 now needs to run like a business. While I understand that sentiment, I don't think it's particularly realistic to expect otherwise.We now have no outside consultants. I bet we're the only station in the market who can say that.
I don't remember the bicycle story specifically, but I don't take on-air errors lightly. I'll put our reporting staff up against anybody in the market.

TV Coverage Maintains Mostly Dignified Tone

2005-04-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

BY ALESSANDRA STANLEY

New York Times

After a long, sorrowful vigil, the Vatican chose to inform the news media of Pope John Paul II's death in the most efficient, if prosaic, way possible: an e-mail message sent to all the major news organizations.
And after two days of somber vigil, the television coverage was just as no-nonsense. The broadcast networks interrupted regular programming with the long-expected announcement and briskly delivered assessments of the John Paul's legacy and the search for a new pope.
CBS News was in the biggest hurry: The news division breezed through an elegiac biography of the pope and a feature on the conclave in less than half an hour so the network could return to a pregame show leading up to the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament.
CBS also chose to show the basketball game instead of an evening news broadcast. (The network managed to squeeze in a news item about the pope's death during halftime.)
ABC and NBC stayed in Rome where their top correspondents had flown in to set the stage for the succession. ABC broadcast a feature, "Rules of the Conclave," that explained how the cardinals sequestered in the Sistine Chapel elect a new pope. It was illustrated with the kind of artist's sketches normally reserved for murder trials where cameras have been banned.
All the networks had lined up Vatican experts, but Brian Williams of NBC News was the only broadcast network anchor to cover the story and anchor the evening news.
MSNBC was first with the news of the pope's death at 2:53 p.m. CNN had provided some of the most thorough and reliable coverage of the pope's final days and hours, but the network was outside St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York when the news broke.
By the time a CNN anchor made the announcement at 2:55 and turned to a live report from the Rome bureau chief, the Vatican undersecretary of state, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, had already informed the thousands in St. Peter's Square that the pope had died. Broadcast networks went live a few minutes after CNN and Fox, so few American viewers heard it live when the archbishop told the world, "We all feel like orphans tonight."
Throughout the long vigil that began on Thursday, television coverage was dignified and painstaking, but there were a few mishaps.
At 1:24 p.m. on Friday, Fox News suddenly announced that the pope had passed away. After a producer read a bulletin from an Italian news service and blurted over an open microphone that the pope had died, the Fox anchor Shepard Smith went with it. "Facts are facts," he told viewers. "It is now our understanding that the pope has died."
The Vatican quickly and vehemently denied the reports and Smith corrected himself, but he took the long view. "The exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment," Smith said, "for we will be reliving John Paul's life for many days and weeks and even years and decades and centuries to come."

The Press, The Polls and Terri Schiavo

2005-03-23T08:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.salon.com

ABC News had to go and ruin everything by commissioning a poll to find out exactly what Americans think about Congress' unprecedented intervention into the Terri Schiavo saga. Up until Monday morning, reporters and pundits, always nervous about labeling the GOP Congress as being out of the mainstream, had done their best to tip toe around existing polling data that showed Americans supported, by an overwhelming majority, Michael Schiavo in his attempt to remove the feeding tube from his wife.
But the ABC poll laid everything bare: By the wide margin of 63 percent to 28 percent, Americans support removing the feeding tube. Even more telling, 70 percent thought congressional intervention was inappropriate, while 67 percent said that Congress acted "more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved."
It's just possible that right after midnight on Sunday, Congress passed the most unpopular piece of legislation in modern times -- not that Republicans had to worry about any bad press. Even with the ABC polling data on the table, notice how the Beltway press did its best to ignore the elephant in the room. On Monday, ABC's The Note, which relishes its ability to mirror, in pitch-perfect tone, the conventional wisdom of the Beltway media establishment, took things to comical extremes when it noted that Congress' intervention had been met with "some public opposition." Only in today's Beltway media environment, where the Republican administration is treated with kid gloves, could a GOP measure panned by a broad, bipartisan swath of Americans -- including 58 percent of self-identified "conservative Republicans"-- be described, with a straight face, as having been met with "some public opposition."
The rest of the press has done a half-hearted job of relaying ABC's slam-dunk poll results. Since they were released Monday morning, they have garnered approximately 24 mentions, combined, on ABC, CBS, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC. To put that in context, during that same time span those same outlets mentioned "Schiavo" 1,823 times, according to TVEyes, the digital, around-the-clock television monitoring service. Last night's telecast of ABC's "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," which covered the Schiavo story extensively, made no mention of the poll results. If ABC News itself puts such little stock in the poll, why should others?
Meanwhile, the New York Times continues it news blackout regarding polling data on the Schiavo case. Since the story crashed page one late last week, the Times, according to a search of the Nexis electronic database, has not yet reported on a single poll indicating just how strongly the American public supports the idea of removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. The most Times readers got today was a mention on the editorial page about how "polls show that the public recoiled at the sight of elected officials racing to make hay of this family's private pain." Times reporters though, have yet to print the results of any of those polls.
At least the Washington Post finally ended its silence on the polling issue, with today's A6 article, "Analysts: GOP May Be Out of Step With Public." Notice two things about that story, though. First, the Post reports in the lead that Americans are "divided" about the Schiavo case, suggesting some kind of public opinion tug-of-war. Not true. To date, every single poll commissioned has come back with the same result: Americans, by margins that range from 20 to 30 to even 40 percent, support Michael Schiavo's decision to remove his wife's feeding tube. How is that "divided?" Second, notice how the Post has to rely on "analysts" to read the polling data. The Post's reporters shouldn't need an analyst to tell them the obvious: When nearly 70 percent of the American public disagrees with you, you're out of step with the mainstream.

Police Restrain 'Good Morning America' Booker During 'Today' Interview

2005-03-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

First on TVNewser: Atlanta police handcuffed Good Morning America booker Mike Nagel this morning after complaints about his disorderly conduct, TVNewser has learned. Nagel was trying to interrupt NBC's interview with Atlanta hostage Ashley Smith this morning. (And some of it happened on-air: does anyone have screen grabs from 'Today?') Here's how the incident unfolded, according to sources at both networks:ABC, really, really wanted an exclusive interview with Smith. And they thought they had it: They were under the impression that they were the only network morning show with the Smith interview. But Smith's attorney had arranged for NBC's 'Today' show to pre-tape an interview with her prior to 7am. Then she would walk around the corner to ABC's bureau for a live chat on GMA.NBC and Smith's attorney planned to pick the guest up at her mother's house, where she spent the night. But ABC beat them to it, sending a limo to pick Smith up -- against the attorney's request, according to NBC. (A rumor floating around 30 Rock says that Nagel pretended to work for NBC.) Smith hopped in the car and rode over to the ABC bureau. Needless to say, Smith's attorney wasn't thrilled. (ABCers believe it was a case of miscommunication between attorney and client.)"When everyone figured out what happened, the guest's lawyer was furious and banned the interview from GMA," a tipster says. Eventually Smith made it to NBC's remote location around the corner from ABC's bureau. While Lauer was pre-taping his interviewing with Smith, "Nagel was doing whatever he could to get this interview to stop," according to an insider. Smith's attorney tried to calm him down, but the police had to get involved. He was not arrested or charged, though.Nagel was released shortly thereafter. When an NBC camera crew asked if Nagel was a producer for GMA, he flippantly said he was with NBC. Watch for this story on the entertainment shows tonight..."'Good Morning America' is blessed to have a top-notch staff of aggressive producers," a statement from the network said this afternoon. "Unfortunately, things got heated over a misunderstanding this morning.Â It has been resolved and we are moving forward to tomorrow's show." > Mar. 10: "Good Morning America posted its best February sweeps ratings since 1991 and 'slashed the gap' with NBC by 65%." > Update: 3:38pm: From an e-mailer: "I saw the 'Today Show' interview this morning with guy on cell phone in background clearly being disruptive and eventually being led away by police. I just thought it was some psycho wanting to get on TV..." You can pull the video off MSNBC.com's Videos page.> Update: 6:40pm: Derek Rose has the play-by-play, based on 'Today' screen grabs.

I just love a good fight!!---- TheAntiMedia

WBTV fires producer for plagarism

2005-02-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

Mark WashburnTV/Radio Writer
WBTV fired a news producer for plagarism this week after discovering a report on Monday's 5:30 p.m. newscast contained two sentences copied verbatim from a story in Sunday's Charlotte Observer.
"It was a very short story," said Dennis Milligan, Channel 3's news director. "Two of the three sentences in the piece were directly copied."
The story, about development in Cabarrus County, was published in Sunday's Cabarrus Neighbors section and available online on charlotte.com. The script, read by anchor Tonia Bendickson, included the first paragraph of the story, written by Observer reporter Ronnie Glassberg.
Milligan said Wednesday he learned about the verbatim duplication when Scott Verner, editor in the Observer's Concord bureau, called to complain about the lack of attribution after hearing Glassberg's story read on the newscast.
"We have zero tolerance for that kind of absolute breach of ethics," said Mary MacMillan, Channel 3's vice president and general manager. The station planned to air an apology to its viewers and the newspaper in its 6 p.m. newscast Wednesday.
"We appreciate them treating it as a serious matter, as do we," said Rick Thames, editor of The Observer.
Saying it was a personnel matter, WBTV would not identify the producer responsible for the story, but a memo to newsroom staff said the person had been fired. Producers work behind the scenes, directing reporters and photographers, assembling scripts and organizing the newscasts.
Milligan said that in the wake of The New York Times plagarism scandal last year, he issued a memo to the news staff reminding them "in no uncertain terms that WBTV would not tolerate any ethical lapse." Milligan said no similar case has been investigated during his three years at the station.

TheantiMedia says. If we really fired someone everytime they used information from a newspaper there would be no news to report because everyone would be fired!!

WTVG’s Carey fed up with TV news

2005-02-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

WTVG’s Carey fed up with TV news
Like many broadcast journalists in their late 20s/early 30s before him, Jim Carey came upon a crossroads and decided to explore a new career path.“I’m ready to try something else,” he said. “I think I’m a little burned out on the business.”TV news, he says, has become too predictable and relies too much on manufactured drama.“It’s like we [in the industry] make a big deal out of everything,” he said.When asked for an example, Carey did not hesitate. “The weather,” he said. “An inch or two of snow now isn’t what an inch or two of snow used to be.”
Jim Carey: WTVG reporter tired of "the daily grind" of TV news.
Zoom Carey, 31, wasn’t specifically criticizing his station – WTVG-TV, Channel 13, where he has spent the past 5½ years – but rather the market as a whole. (WNWO-TV, Channel 24, for example, upped the ante in August when it began branding itself as “Toledo’s Weather Station.”)While he understands news coverage – be it weather, school levies, or presidential visits – is often dictated by what the competition is doing, Carey believes in-depth features, which he considers to be his strength, are getting “squeezed out by stories that are controversial.” The situation is not unique to the Toledo market, he said.Carey’s contract expires at the end of the month. He and his wife, Gina, who works in a behind-the-scenes role at WTVG, plan to move to the state of Washington, where his parents and three siblings live, and conduct a job search from there. He would like to work in public relations in either Seattle or Portland, Ore.“I have a couple of irons in the fire,” he said. “I haven’t sent anything to television stations, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”He said there’s only a 10 percent chance that he’ll stay in the TV news game. He was offered a one-year contract by WTVG, but turned it down. “I’m just tired of the daily grind,” he said.WTVG news director Brian Trauring acknowledged that constant deadlines take their toll. “There’s no question you have to have a lot of passion to be in this business,” he said. “Some people thrive on the daily deadlines; for other people, after a certain period of time, it becomes too much.”Carey admitted that losing his Saturday anchor position in early 2004 – when the station hired former WTOL-TV, Channel 11, anchor Bill Hormann – made him start contemplating his future in TV news. But the biggest factors, he said, were the desire to move closer to his family and the frustration over consultant-driven newscasts.EXPANDED ROLE: WNWO is using Tom Bosco as a “third anchor” for its 5 p.m. newscast, joining primary anchors Jim Blue and Jennifer Stacey, according to news director Jonathan Mitchell. He will be seen regularly in the 5:30 and 6 p.m. newscasts as well. Bosco is co-anchor of the station’s two-hour morning newscast.

Madison TV Reporter Arrested

2005-02-13T18:54:00.000-08:00

Police Say WKOW Reporter Was Armed With Semiautomatic Handgun And Had Drugs
Channel3000.com

BELOIT, Wis. -- Madison television reporter Joe Mason is in custody after allegedly being armed and causing a disturbance outside a Beloit radio station Friday.

Mason is the Rock County reporter for WKOW-TV, Channel 27 News.

Beloit police said Mason was exhibiting "unusual and threatening behavior" and was armed with a semiautomatic handgun. In addition to the gun, Mason also had marijuana on him, police said. He faces tentative charges of carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly conduct while armed and possession of marijuana.

Mason was on the job for WKOW-TV when police said he initiated a bizarre series of confrontations. Beloit Police Capt. Bill Tyler told WISC-TV in Madison that Mason got into an argument with a community center director earlier in the day, and then entered the radio station with a semiautomatic handgun.

All but a news anchor were evacuated from the building, police said.

A number of officers responded, and after 15 minutes, Mason was arrested after getting behind the wheel of a channel 27 news car. That's when police also discovered the marijuana, they said.

WKOW posted a short news story on its Web site at 4:21 p.m. saying Mason, whose real name is Joe Ulrey, appears to be suffering from a mental disorder and may not have been taking his medication.

According to Mason's bio on the WKOW Web site, he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and previously worked at WBOY-TV in West Virginia as a reporter and at WGN-TV in Chicago as a weather assistant.

You gotta love it. A reporter with a gun! S

Fake News, Fake Reporter

2005-02-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

Why was a partisan hack, using an alias and with no journalism background, given repeated access to daily White House press briefings?By Eric Boehlert http://www.salon.com
When President Bush bypassed dozens of eager reporters from nationally and internationally recognized news outlets and selected Jeff Gannon to pose a question at his Jan. 26 news conference, Bush's recognition bestowed instant credibility on the apparently novice reporter, as well as the little-known conservative organization he worked for at the time, called Talon News. That attention only intensified when Gannon used his nationally televised press conference time to ask Bush a loaded, partisan question -- featuring a manufactured quote that mocked Democrats for being "divorced from reality."
Gannon's star turn quickly piqued the interest of many online commentators, who wondered how an obvious Republican operative had been granted access to daily White House press briefings normally reserved for accredited journalists. Two weeks later, a swarming investigation inside the blogosphere into Gannon and Talon News had produced all sorts of damning revelations about how Talon is connected at the hip to a right-wing activist organization called GOPUSA, how its "news" staff consists largely of volunteer Republican activists with no journalism experience, how Gannon often simply rewrote GOP press releases when filing his Talon dispatches. It also uncovered embarrassing information about Gannon's past as well as his fake identity. When Gannon himself this week confirmed to the Washington Post that his name was a pseudonym, it only added to the sense of a bizarre hoax waiting to be exposed.
On Tuesday night, the reporter who apparently saw himself as a trailblazing conservative "embedded with the liberal Washington press corps" abruptly quit his post as Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, that after earlier taunting those digging into his past that he was "hiding in plain sight." Contacted by e-mail for a comment, Gannon referred Salon to the message posted on his Web site http://www.jeffgannon.com/: "Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News. In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life. Thank you to all those who supported me."
The Gannon revelations come on the heels of the discovery that Bush administration officials signed lucrative contracts for several conservative pundits who hyped White House initiatives and did not disclose the government's payments. The Talon News fiasco raises serious questions about who the White House is allowing into its daily press briefings: How can a reporter using a fake name and working for a fake news organization get press credentials from the White House, let alone curry enough favor with the notoriously disciplined Bush administration to get picked by the president in order to ask fake questions? The White House did not return Salon's calls seeking answers to those questions.
The situation "begs further investigation," says James Pinkerton, a media critic for Fox News who has worked for two Republican White Houses. "In the six years I worked for Reagan and Bush I, I remember the White House being strict about who got in. It's inconceivable to me that the White House, especially after 9/11, gives credentials to people without doing a background check."
Gannon reportedly did not have what's known as a "hard pass" for the White House press room, which allows journalists to enter daily without getting prior approval each time. Instead Gannon picked up a daily pass by contacting the White House press office each morning and asking for clearance. Mark Smith, vice president of the White House Correspondents Association, says it's up to White House officials to decide whom they want to wave in each day. "They don't consult us." If they had, Smith says, he would have been "very uncomfortable" granting Gannon the same access as professional journalists.
And the association never would have backed a reporter using an alias. Says Pinkerton: "If [Gannon] was walking around the White House with a pass that had a different name on it than his real name, that's pretty remarkable." Smith, who covers the White House for Associated Press radio, says he "could have sworn" that he saw credentials around Gannon's neck with the name "Jeff Gannon" on them.
"Somebody was waving him into the White House every day," notes David Brock, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, an online liberal advocacy group that led the way in raising questions about Gannon and Talon News.
Earlier this week, when asked about Gannon's access, White House press secretary Scott McClellan essentially threw up his hands and said he has no control over who is in the press room and whom the president calls on during his rare press conferences. "I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into the business of being a media critic or picking and choosing who gets credentials," he told the Washington Post.
"That's like [McClellan] saying, 'I'm chief of staff at a hospital and when a patient dies in surgery and it turns out the guy operating wasn't a doctor ... [it's] not my business to be a medical critic,'" says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has written extensively about the inner workings of the Bush administration. "Nobody is asking him to be a media critic. They're asking him to make sure people in the press room -- the ones using up precious time during extremely rare press conferences -- are acting journalists, honest brokers dealing with genuine inquiry to get at the truth."
Suskind questions the White House's explanation that Bush had no idea who Gannon was when he called on him during the press conference. "Frankly, my sense is that almost nothing happens inside the White House episodically. They are so ardent with their message discipline. It all happens for a reason."
And it's not as if finding out the connection between Talon and GOPUSA was difficult. The Standing Committee of Correspondents, a group of congressional reporters who oversee press credential distribution on Capitol Hill, did just that last spring when Gannon approached the organization to apply for a press pass. "We didn't recognize the publication, so we asked for information about what Talon was," says Julie Davis, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun who is on the committee. "We did some digging, and it became clear it was owned by the owner of GOPUSA. And we had asked for some proof of Talon's editorial independence from that group ... They didn't provide anything, so we denied their credentials, which is pretty rare," says Davis. She adds, "There's limited space, and particularly after 9/11 there's limited access to the Capitol. Our role is to make sure journalists have as much access as possible, and to ensure that credentials mean something."
Talon's unusual access to the White House has upset journalists at other small outlets who don't enjoy the same privileged connections. "We're a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 22,000 and I'm pretty sure we couldn't get a White House press pass," says Mike Hudson, editor of the Niagara Falls Reporter in Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How does Gannon, which isn't even his real name, get past security?" Hudson wrote to Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., asking her office "to look into how a partisan political organization and an individual with no credentials as a reporter -- and apparently operating under an assumed name -- landed a coveted spot in the White House press corps."
Slaughter, a vocal critic of the administration's pundit payola practices, wrote to the White House on Monday urging Bush "to please explain to the Congress and to the American people how and why the individual known as 'Mr. Gannon' was repeatedly cleared by your staff to join the legitimate White House press corps."
Until this week, what little was known about Gannon was vague. But several Web sites he is connected with provide some possible clues. Introducing himself to readers of his ConservativeGuy.com Web site, Gannon once wrote, "I've been a preppie, a yuppie, blue-collar, green-collar and white collar. I've served in the military, graduated from college, taught in the public school system, was a union truck driver, a management consultant, a fitness instructor and an entrepreneur. I'm a two-holiday Christian and I usually vote Republican."
When the recent controversy erupted, Gannon positioned himself as more of an ardent right-winger, not to mention ardent Christian. On JeffGannon.com he wrote, "I'm everything people on the Left seem to despise. I'm a man who is white, politically conservative, a gun-owner, an SUV driver and I've voted for Republicans. I'm pro-American, pro-military, pro-democracy, pro-capitalism, pro-free speech, anti-tax and anti-big government. Most importantly, I'm a Christian. Not only by birth, but by rebirth through the blood of Jesus Christ." Posting on the right-wing FreeRepublic.com, Gannon, while working as a White House reporter, once urged fellow Freepers to stage a demonstration outside Sen. John Kerry's headquarters and chant Jane Fonda's name and throw DNC medals, a reference to the Vietnam ribbons of honor Kerry threw away during an antiwar demonstration in the early 1970s.
As a would-be reporter, Gannon often copied entire sections from White House press releases and pasted them into his stories, according to an analysis done by Media Matters. This despite the fact he once ridiculed legitimate journalists for "working off the talking points provided by the Democrats."
According to his bio on Talon's Web site (which has now been removed), he's a graduate of the "Pennsylvania State University System," which could mean anything from Penn State to a much smaller state-run school such as West Chester University. He also noted that he's a graduate of Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism -- which is a two-day, $50 seminar run by Morton Blackwell, a longtime Republican activist who co-founded the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and has said that those on "the ultra left harness hate and envy in their quest for unlimited power." Blackwell's journalism seminar aims to "prepare conservatives for success in politics, government and the news media," according to the institute's Web site. The classes are also designed to "bring balance to the media."
It was Blackwell, serving as a Virginia delegate to the GOP convention this summer, who handed out purple bandages in an effort to make fun of Kerry's Vietnam War wounds. They read: "It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it?" Blackwell also served as a mentor to a young field organizer who is now Bush's deputy chief of staff. (Karl Rove called Blackwell just days after winning the 2000 election to thank him for his help.)
What likely forced Gannon to quit Talon News Tuesday were the revelations uncovered by bloggers such as World O' Crap, AmericaBlog, Mediacitizen, Daily Kos and Eschaton, along with their readers, about Gannon's past. For instance, bloggers uncovered evidence suggesting that the person and company that own the Web site JeffGannon.com also registered the gay-themed sites hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com and militaryescortsm4m.com. And according to this online research, that company, Bedrock Corp., is owned by a man named Jim Guckert, leading to speculation that Guckert and Gannon are one and the same. Bedrock is based in Wilmington, Del., where Gannon apparently is from.
As for Talon, its Web site says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." The site is run by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, which touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America." As Media Matters documented, "In addition to Eberle's dual role as the head of both entities, both domain names TalonNews.com and GOPUSA.com are registered to the same address in Pearland, Texas, which appears to be Eberle's personal residence. The TalonNews.com domain name registration lists Eberle's e-mail address as bobby.eberle@gopusa.com ... Talon News apparently consists of little more than Eberle, Gannon, and a few volunteers, and is virtually indistinguishable from GOPUSA.com ... GOPUSA's officers and directors show a similar lack of journalism experience, but plenty of experience working for Republican causes." After Media Matters highlighted the background of Talon's "news team," Talon quickly yanked their bios from the site.
There is evidence that ownership of both Talon and GOPUSA changed hands Monday, just as the Gannon controversy was growing. More recently, many archived stories, including some dealing with the issue of homosexuality and defending the ban on gay marriage, were scrubbed from the Talon site. Eberle at Talon and GOPUSA did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Last year Gannon and Talon made a blip on the Beltway radar over an interview Gannon did with former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent by conservative columnist Robert Novak. That potentially illegal disclosure prompted an independent counsel investigation. Gannon apparently attracted investigators' attention when, in the interview with Wilson, he referred to an unclassified document that may have been distributed to conservative allies in the press to bolster the administration's case that it was Wilson's wife who suggested he be sent to Niger to investigate the claim that Iraq tried to purchase uranium, or yellowcake, from the African nation.
It's likely Talon and Gannon would have remained obscure had the swaggering reporter not popped his now famous question to Bush. The details surrounding the Jan. 26 press room incident are telling, as they highlight the elasticity Gannon and other partisan advocates often use in their "reporting." Gannon asked Bush, "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy." He continued, "[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"
Reid never made any such comment about soup lines.
That afternoon conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh crowed that Gannon's question was "a repeat, a rehash, of a precise point I made on this program yesterday." However, Limbaugh conceded that Reid had "never actually said 'soup lines.'" That was simply Limbaugh's exaggerated characterization of Reid's concerns. Gannon either heard that phrase on Limbaugh's show or read it in Limbaugh's online column and then inserted it into his loaded question to Bush. On Feb. 2, with Gannon under fire for his lack of journalistic ethics, Limbaugh suddenly flip-flopped and told listeners that Gannon's question about Reid and soup lines "was an accurate recitation of what the Senate Democrat leaders had said." Then, in a Feb. 7 article in the Washington Post, Gannon finally conceded the quote was made up, but suggested he had nothing to apologize for.
All of which begs the question, "Who are they issuing credentials to?" asks Hudson at the Niagara Falls Reporter. "Could a guy from [Comedy Central's] 'The Daily Show' get press credentials from this White House?"
About the writer Eric Boehlert is a Senior writer at Salon.

DEATH VISITS SINCLAIR LIVE SHOT. . . SURPRISE

2005-02-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

DEATH VISITS SINCLAIR LIVE SHOT. . . SURPRISE

COLUMBUS, OH (February 4, 2005) — Sinclair Broadcasting affiliates FOX-TV WTTE (Channel 28) and ABC WSYX-TV (Channel 6) had an unanticipated brush with Death on their noon news broadcasts today.

The Grim Reaper, grinning beneath a black hood, approached the live shot with a plastic sickle and a scroll. The Reaper lurked just behind the Sinclair reporter’s shoulder for the remainder of the shot.

NEWSBREAKERS, a media watchdog organization, posted video of the event on their website, www.newsbreakers.org.

Sinclair Broadcasting controls FOX and ABC Columbus television stations, offering viewers “The Power of Television Times Two”. The stations, which share news programming in the market, aired a report pertaining to a series of bloodless shootings and revisited a string of shootings that killed a woman in Ohio a year earlier.

NEWSBREAKERS anchor JD Rozz explained why the reaper’s assistance was needed for Sinclair’s story.

“News teams love the Reaper. They count on him to Hezazz things up all the time. Today he just wanted a little face time,” Rozz said.

“I’m tight with organizations like Sinclair. I try to respect their deadlines as my own,” said the Reaper. “I strive to preserve the synergy that exists between us.”
NEWSBREAKERS is a nonpartisan media watchdog organization that offers comment and critique on the role of TV news. The group relies on parody and non-traditional media interventions.

The group is currently planning future events.

CONTACT: (212) 931-8548 or e-mail questions to questions@newsbreakers.org

U.S. Journalists Fare Well On Test Of Ethics, Study Finds

2005-02-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

Peter Johnson
USA TODAY

Recent opinion polls show declining respect for the news media and a growing belief among many Americans that reporters have little regard for ethics.

High-profile journalism scandals involving ethical lapses at CBS News, The New York Times, USA TODAY and other media outlets have fed the public's distrust of reporters.

Just this week, a survey of 112,000 high school students found that 36% say newspapers should get government approval before publishing stories and that 32% say the media enjoy too much freedom.

But in a new study, journalism turns out to be one of the most morally developed professions in the country, ranking behind only seminarians, physicians and medical students.

Two researchers from the Missouri School of Journalism and Louisiana State University administered the Defining Issues Test - a standardized test designed to measure reactions to ethical dilemmas - to 249 reporters from print and broadcast newsrooms across the USA.

Who's ethical? Profession Score (out of 100)

Seminarians and philosophers 65.1
Medical students 50.2
Practicing physicians 49.2
Journalists {+1} 48.7
Dental students 47.6
Nurses 46.3
Undergraduate students 43.2
Accounting students 42.8
Veterinary students 42.2
Orthopedic surgeons 41.0
Adults overall 40.0

Source: University of Missouri School of Journalism; 1 -based on testing of 249 journalists

The test, Missouri professor Lee Wilkins says, has been given to at least 30,000 professionals over the past 30 years, though never on a large scale to journalists.

Wilkins says journalists scored fourth-highest among the groups of professionals and students who were tested.

They ranked above dental students, nurses, graduate students, undergraduate college students, veterinary students and the adult population in general.

(By comparison, a smaller group Wilkins and Louisiana State's Renita Coleman examined for moral development - 65 advertising professionals - fared much worse ethically than journalists did.)

No significant differences were found among various groups of journalists, including men and women, broadcast and print reporters and managers and non-managers.

But journalists who did civic journalism or investigative reporting scored significantly higher than those who did not.

"Giving journalists the opportunity to work through more ethical dilemmas, whether they are real, occurring on the job or hypothetical in seminars and workshops, bodes well for the profession," Wilkins says.

"Thinking like a journalist involves moral reflection, done at a level that in most instances equals or exceeds members of other learned professions."

Tom Rosenstiel of Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism says the findings echo what the Pew Research Center found in a survey of journalists in 1999. "Most of them got into the business out of a sense that journalism helps democracy work and that they are helping their fellow citizens," he says.

"Journalists get in this business out of an overriding sense of wanting to serve the public interest. They work bad hours, are grossly underpaid, they are derided by other media in Hollywood and increasingly distrusted by the public.

"So if you're not motivated by a sense of public mission, there's not a lot of reason to do it

AP falls for fake GI capture Story? Is it a GI JOE DOLL? Or something more sinister?

2005-02-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

'It is our doll... to me it definitely looks like it is. Everything the guy is wearing is exactly what comes with our figure,' Liam Cusack of Dragon Models USA, inc., tells the ASSOCIATED PRESS

The original story that was released before questions were raised!
By ROBERT H. REID

(AP) U.S. Army soldiers guard the outside of the Camp Bucca Theater Internment Facility near
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim's authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.
The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo's authenticity could not be confirmed.
A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and behind him on the wall is a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Marine Sgt. Salju K. Thomas, said he had no information on the claim but "we are currently looking into it."

(AP) This image of what appears to be a captured US soldier was posted on an Iraqi militant website,...Full ImageA statement posted with the picture suggested the group was holding other soldiers.
"Our mujahadeen heroes of Iraq's Jihadi Battalion were able to capture American military man John Adam after killing a number of his comrades and capturing the rest," said the statement, signed by the "Mujahedeen Brigades."
"God willing, we will behead him if our female and male prisoners are not released from U.S. prisons within the maximum period of 72 hours from the time this statement has been released," the statement said.
The posting did not show any ID card for the alleged captive and no organization's name was written on the black banner, as have appeared in some past claims of kidnappings. The man's uniform had no U.S. insignia or names visible.
The Mujahedeen Brigades have claimed responsibility for two kidnappings in the past - the abduction in April of three Japanese who were released and that of a Brazilian engineer who went missing after an ambush that the Brigades claimed to have carried out along with the Ansar al-Sunnah Army.
More than 180 foreigners have been kidnapped in the past year. At least 10 of them, including three American civilians, remain in the hands of their kidnappers.
The only American soldier known to have been taken hostage is Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, who was shown in a video in April being held by militants. Another video aired in June showed what purported to be Maupin's slaying, but the picture was too unclear to confirm it was him and the military still lists him as missing.
Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun went missing in Iraq in June and later photos surfaced on Arab television showing him blindfolded with a sword to his head. In July he made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Back in the United States, he said he had been captured, but in December he was charged with desertion for the incident.

What ever happened to GI joe with the Kung Foo grip? I bet he was captured too!

Why the public Hates the Media (a insiders look)

2005-01-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

You already know the story. Two weeks ago, a small plane crashed into power lines at Orlando's Dubsdread Golf Course, and a heroic passerby rushed to pull its two passengers from the wreckage. One of the men in the plane died, the other survived.

What you probably don't know is that the heroic passerby, Brandon "Bosco" Cashen, is my fiance – a happenstance that afforded me, a member of the press, an up-close and personal look at how it feels to be on the other side of a media firestorm. Long story short, it isn't pretty. But we'll get to that.

Bosco (we're on a first-name basis) isn't a shy man. But he despises the limelight. In fact, when I wanted to write this story, focusing less on him and more on the media, he wasn't thrilled with the idea. But after what we've both been through, he saw my point.

There's an old saw in journalism that goes like this: News is like a hot dog; if you knew how either was made, you wouldn't want to consume them anymore. Now I know why.

THE CRASH

Bosco called me from a borrowed cell phone right after he pulled the men out of the wreckage. He'd dropped his phone inside the plane. I rushed to Dubsdread to meet him. "Bosco!" I screamed. He didn't hear me. "Bosco!" I yelled again from behind a long strand of yellow police tape.

Making my way toward him, I immediately noticed members of the media swarming the remains of the Cessna. After weaving through a throng of TV reporters, I finally reached Bosco and hugged him.

"Let's get out of here, I want to go home," he said somberly.

Before we could make it to his car, we heard a woman shouting Bosco's name. A blond woman holding a Channel 6 microphone, trailed by a cameraman, ran up to us.

"Bosco, can you tell us what happened?" she asked eagerly.

"Uh, no thanks. I don't really want to talk," he said, walking away slowly.

"Please, Bosco, this is really important. You did a good thing. We want to hear what you have to say. Can you tell us anything at all about what you saw? Please. Please," she persisted.

"Sorry. I just don't feel like talking right now."

A look of disappointment washed over her face. Bosco turned his back to her, leaned closer to me and whispered, "I just pulled two men from a plane crash. I'm not in the mood for this."

Before dawn the next morning, we went online for more information about the crash. On the Orlando Sentinel home page was a photo of the crash showing three men reaching to grab a victim's body. Bosco's arm was barely visible outside the plane door, holding the body.

"Fatal plane crash sparks heroic acts," he read aloud. "Wait a minute, what the hell?"

The article was almost entirely about Bosco, complete with quotes that made it sound like he'd been directly interviewed by the Sentinel reporter, when he hadn't knowingly talked to any reporters.

"I thought you didn't talk to any reporters?" I asked.

"I didn't! I spoke to a police officer and there were a few officials around. I didn't realize there was a Sentinel guy there. It all happened so fast. Could they have just got this from the police report?"

Twenty minutes later the phone was ringing nonstop. We didn't pick up. Bosco was afraid the story made him seem as though he was "out for glory." I gave him a playful smack on the back of his head and told him not to worry. "This will all be over in, well, '15 minutes,' as they say."

He stared at the screen. "But I didn't ask for this."

FIFTEEN MINUTES

I sneaked into work 20 minutes early to e-mail a quick thank-you letter to Sentinel reporter Mark Schlueb – the man who wrote the front-page story. Schlueb responded in less than five minutes. He told me Inside Edition was trying to track down Bosco. I knew Bosco didn't want reporters digging around for his information, so I gave Schlueb my number.

By the time I got out of an hour-long meeting, I had nine phone calls, five from a New York area code. My cell phone rang again. It was Bosco telling me a CNN producer from Anderson Cooper 360° called his mother, requesting an interview with him for the 7 p.m. show.

Reporter Kathi Belich, with WFTV Channel 9 News, had also tracked down Bosco's mom and was standing on her doorstep begging for an interview.

"This is getting so out of hand," he said, a little frustrated. "How long is this going to last?"

After thinking about it, I told him to cooperate with the media. If they didn't talk to him, they'd talk to someone else about him, and who knows what people would say to get on the news?

Bosco said he had another call. It was his old roommate. Reporters were on her door-step, too.

"I'll talk to them," he said, sighing. "But this is such an invasion."

CHUM IN THE WATER

By 2:15 p.m. that day we were pulling into the WKMG-TV Channel 6 news station off John Young Parkway for an interview with Inside Edition. Producer Carl Bevelhymer had been calling all morning from New York, trying desperately to get us to the studio by 2:30 p.m.

We signed in and were ushered to the set. A man grabbed Bosco by the arm and slapped a microphone on him.

"Just look into the camera when you talk," he said. In less than five minutes, Bosco was recounting the previous day's tragedy to a man in a New York newsroom.

Two minutes into the broadcast, I noticed Channel 6 reporter Erik von Ancken entering the room. He stopped next to me and put his hands on his hips.

"Do you know this guy?" he asked, pointing to Bosco.

"Yes, I'm his fiance," I whispered.

"So this is yesterday's mystery guy, right?" he asked with wide eyes.

"Uh, I guess so. He pulled the men from the plane, if that's what you mean."

Von Ancken's face lit up. "That's great," he said excitedly. He took a few steps closer to the set where Bosco was sitting and waited behind the cameras. I knew he was going to pounce as soon as he removed his earpiece.

Sure enough, von Ancken approached Bosco. "You did a great thing yesterday," he said. "People are calling you a hero. Do you think, since we already have you here, you could answer a few questions for us, too?"

A few minutes later, Bosco was in front of a huge screen showing footage of the plane crash. "Did you ever fear for your own life?" asked von Ancken.

As we were about to exit the building, von Ancken ran up behind us. "If you guys haven't done any other interviews, would you mind not talking to any other reporters, like Channel 9, until after 5 p.m.? We want to get the exclusive with this, and they are our direct competition."

"It's a business, babe," I said to Bosco as we walked to the car. "Don't let it get to you."

I had a voice message on my phone. "Hey Leigh, it's Carl from Inside Edition. So that was great. It turned out to be a cute little news story. Call me back, I want to send Bosco a check, and I need to make sure I have the right contact information for him. Thanks."

Bosco was shocked that Inside Edition was sending him money.

"I told them I didn't want any money," he said. "I guess I don't have a say in anything, do I?"

"I guess not," I shrugged.

CNN CALLING

In the next half hour CNN, Channel 9 and Orlando Sentinel reporters all wanted interviews. Belich, the Channel 9 reporter, was still at Bosco's mom's house, trying to get her son to give Belich an interview. I took Belich's phone number and told his mom we would try to call later.

Back at home Bosco secluded himself in the bedroom. At around 3:45 p.m., he emerged, saying he was overwhelmed and needed help calling reporters back. I started by phoning Lisa Roberts from the Sentinel, who had called minutes before. Roberts was writing a story about heroism and wanted to interview Bosco. She was very warm and friendly. I told her I'd call her back with an answer.

Next I called Belich who, initially, was less friendly. "I was expecting Bosco's phone call at 3 o'clock," she said dryly. "We're going live at 5, so now we don't have time to do the interview."

I apologized, explaining that Bosco had been running around all day.

"It's a little bit of an inconvenience for me that I'm getting your phone call this late," she replied. "His mom told me he would be calling earlier …."

At that point I got angry, but managed to calm down. "Well, as you can imagine, Bosco has been through a lot these past two days," I said. "He had to do an interview with Inside Edition and Channel 6 earlier, this is all completely foreign to him …."

She interrupted. "So he has done an interview with Channel 6?"

"Yeah, they grabbed us on the way out of our interview with Inside Edition," I said.

"Oh, I see. I wasn't aware that he had done those other interviews," she said, disappointment in her voice.

Somehow I was beginning to feel guilty. "If you still want to interview him, he has a 7 p.m. interview with Anderson Cooper, so it would have to be before that."

Belich agreed, and I gave her our home address. By the time she and a cameraman arrived, she was all smiles. Bosco was getting the hang of things, probably because he was answering the same questions for the third time in four hours.

Next it was off to do the Anderson Cooper show. When we arrived at the Newslink building off Vineland Road, we were enthusiastically greeted by a cameraman who ushered me into the green room and swept Bosco off to a set decorated with fake plants and library books. Bosco looked more terrified than ever.

When the segment was finished, the cameraman disappeared, along with his enthusiasm. No one even showed us to the door.

YESTERDAY'S NEWS

Since Bosco's brush with fame he's been contacted two times by a citizen, and by the director of the local chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. Both men wanted to present him with awards for bravery. We've also received a few more phone calls from von Ancken at Channel 6 hoping to get the exclusive "reunion" footage of Bosco and the surviving crash victim.

"Sure, they can come," Bosco said sarcastically. "As long as they don't bring any cameras. I'm not going to drag this guy into my circus."

But it was the last message, on Jan. 16, that officially ended his relationship with the media. Bosco had disgust in his voice when he told me about it.

"OK, you're not going to believe this one," he said. "Some guy from Channel 6 called, I couldn't hear if it was von Ancken or someone else. They left a message asking if they could meet me and my family at my church to film me praying. They said they wanted to do another story, and were curious to know if I thought God was guiding me during the accident."

I started laughing.

"They created this story out of thin air," he said. "Before they figured out whether or not I even go to church! Can you believe that?"

I believe it

By Leigh de Armas Published 1/27/2005

Myopic Zeal the word of the day!

2005-01-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

Myopic Zeal is what they are calling the fiasco at CBS, after the ax came down on four employees, including two executive's. There was even one report saying Dan Rather called in sick on the day of the firings. They Call it Myopic Zeal, I call it business as usual. As more and more news organizations cut their budgets you will see more of this not checking the facts kind of mentality, "its better to be first and wrong that to be last and right" The news media is losing it credibility ok I take that back what I meant to say is, Has Lost its credibility. Fake live shots misinformation, slanted opinions, you name it its in the main stream media everyday, and when someone tries to speak up about they are fired blacklisted. You gotta love America!

I'm back ......

2005-01-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

After spending a couple weeks in a turkish detention camp I have returned!! I see the news has not changed much.... I think the news should change it's name to chicken little .... you know why don't make me say it! I long for the days when news is actually told and not created the time when a reporter goes out to hunt down a story and not read it from the morning paper. I just read about a new news watchdog group called the news breakers out of New York cool!! we need more news critics maybe they can help the media get it right!

"keep your blacks blacker than black"

2004-09-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

At least that is what Woolite says, in one of thier commercials I just had to laugh... is it a subliminal message of a honest commericial written by someone who has no real thoughts of its meaning . Planters peanuts had a commericial that says don't blow a Saturday with an ordinary Nut...or my favorite ad by Cornnuts "Bust a Nut" I believe every commericial has a meaning I just question the woolite commercial and its timing to the elections or that is what one poster believes I found this post when I entered the phrase "Keep Your Blacks Blacker than Black" in the google search engine....

Color Guard
Have you ever noticed the political messages in commercials? They're there. In the 1960s, when the Ku Klux Klan was in vogue, the big commercial was about Ajax laundry detergent, whereby a white knight on horseback would ride down the road touching things with his sword and turning them white. This commercial caused Dean Martin to joke about having that white knight touch Sammy Davis Jr.
Then came the 1980s, and Ronald Reagan was running for president with morality now being an issue. A popular commercial then was by Bold detergent. The commercial slogan was, "to get the whites right, you must get the colors clean." Get it? This carried on to the first Bush candidacy. Remember Willie Horton?
Fast-forward now to the current election, where the attempt is to turn the clocks back to pre-Civil Rights days, the days before the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional. We now have a new ad by Woolite showing a woman saying that she likes her clothing totally black or white. The ad then states that to keep your blacks blacker than black, use Woolite. Now, I say for this upcoming election, be careful and don't let the politicians pull the Woolite over your eyes.
--Alex Frazier, Syracuse

Interesting observation.....

Breaking News

2004-09-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Breaking News, what a scam, that is the most over used phrase in the news industry. Ok, here is my opinion on what breaking news is " an event that is happening now" This is how many of the news outlets see breaking news, " an event that may or may not have happened 6 hours ago". The consultants believe that using the word Breaking News grabs the attention of the viewer giving the impression that the station has something new to add to a story that may have been ended hours ago, and in most cases they have no new information so you were tricked into watching the 11 o'clock news when you rather be asleep. Stations use slick graphics and what I call war drums type music to capture your attention. When I hear the words breaking news I find myself glued to the television waiting to hear if the world came to an end.. Remember in the past we used such words like "news flash" and "this just in" and now the new phrase "Developing Story" all to make you think they are on top of everything.

The news is totally consultant driven, these people believe that every viewer wants to see some action during news broadcasts, allow me to introduce you to the "walk and talk"... If you are not aware of what a walk and talk is, just watch the news, when you see a reporter walking toward the camera and pointing at an unseen object or person that my friend is a walk and talk not to be confused with the "show and tell". The show and tell is when you have an active scene behind you and you show the viewer what is going on live and in color. A walk and talk usually can be identified by lack of content during the introduction. There are several different versions of the walk and talk, there is the "three step" where the reporter will take three steps toward the camera, there is the "hide and seek" where the reporter walks out of frame only to re-appear on the opposite side if the television screen. There are many different versions of the walk and talk some have not been named, we use to make up stupid walk and talk versions to see if managenent was paying attention most of the time they don't notice. They would only notice when there was no movement in our story.

I love my job and I hate my job

2004-08-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

Working in the media can be very rewarding, there are times when I wonder if they realize that they are paying me to do something I probably would do for free. Then there are the days when I wish I had stayed in college and never took a job in news. I really think it is rude and thoughtless when we are sent to interview someone who just lost their family member or a close friend. Do you really think a person wants a camera shoved in their face following a tragic event. However this is how it works, there are people out there who wish they had my job and would do anything to get my job . Everyday I am approached by someone asking how do they get a job like mine, I use to enjoy answering that question the first 10,000 times, and if you don't believe me just ask anyone in the media they will tell you they get the same questions. If I may give you a little advice, If you could look for another profession please do. We are the first responders, during a disaster, except all we are armed with is a Camera or a pen and a paper..We don't have safety suits and we don't carry guns (or at least admit to it) and everyone is not making a shitload of money.

I have seen almost every way there is to die, Body parts, burned parts maggot covered parts. There are days when I only get one hour of sleep because we have to feed the news monster... When it rains we are standing outside telling you its raining, if its snowing and 20 below zero we are standing in the snow telling you its snowing and if it's 110 degrees outside we are standing there telling you you could fry an egg on the sidewalk as if you are too dumb to look out the window and see what the weather is. So what make me say I can't believe they pay me for working in the media? Its the 1% of the stories I cover that make a difference and the story that give you a adrenaline rush like no other for me gun play gives me a rush I can't begin to describe, capturing that 20 seconds of video that makes you say wow!!! Or beating my competitor to a breaking news story, and covering real news. But when a bridge collapses in China and management wants us to find a local angle to a story that took place in China that really pisses me off. Weekend news is the worst there is at best two photographers on duty so you don't get the real good local stories but never fear they cover the same story on Monday because Mondays are the "quick find the newspaper" we need a story day!

The fourth branch of the government

2004-08-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

The media, we have the power to sway a vote, convict a criminal guilty or not, trigger investigations, stop wars (sometimes) and create a false fear. The public has learned via the media to fear the black man and although some outlets have a policy of not mentioning the race of a suspect, there are other ways of mentioning someone's race, for example lets say the suspect was Asian the reporter will mention something like the suspect is well known in Chinatown and has lived there all his life... Or my favorite race mentioning without mentioning race is the suspect was last seen running toward an area that you know only a certain race lives like in the black part of town, I mean really, what is the chance that a white man was seen running into the projects after shooting two people. Another thing you may not notice have you ever listen to the double standard when it comes to blacks? For example if a crime or something negative was mentioned in the newscast that person more than likely will be called Black, However if that person had done something good they would be referred to as an African American.... Think about it Black on Black Crime is bad an African American Church is good...The Black Community is bad but the African American community is usually good. If you don't believe me just watch the news....We are taught to believe black is bad.. I do not plan to go on a rant about race I just want to open your eyes and your ears when you watch the local and national news.

The news has changed over the years, in the beginning when the news was run by newsies, where they you take two or three days to work a story. Thing are so different now everything is run by corporations and news consultants who don't have a clue what real news is... There was a time when reporters would go out and search for and dig up great stories, now when we arrive at work we are handed the morning paper and are forced to chase a story with absolutely no broadcast value or visuals so what you end up seeing is a bunch of talking heads and some file footage instead of getting three days to turn a story the are usually allowed 5 hours...This is why he media get the story wrong sometimes, because deadlines come pretty quick and not every reporter checks every lead... Most of the time we wait until some other station breaks a story so we can quote an unknown source there by absolving ourselves of any responsibility.

Why do we need the media?

2004-08-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

Case and point, there is a case making its was through the judicial system where a man who may or may not have committed a murder he was found guilty 14 years ago by a San Francisco, California Jury. Just recently he was set free because it was determined that the prosecution withheld evidence that may have proved his innocence, so he was deemed factually innocent and set free. This man is now suing he system asking for 100 dollars a day for the last 14 years something around 500,000 not much when you spent the last 14 years in prison. The state is requiring this man to prove his innocence in order to get compensated for his false imprisonment.

This is a strong reason why we need the media!

Welcome to the Antimedia.com Blog

2004-08-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

I have been in working in the Broadcast media since 1990, I have many awards in my profession and have been considered very good at what I do....I will refrain from giving you any personal information about me or where I work for obvious reasons, but this blogger is my attempt to vent and hopefully add some clarity to what it is we do in the media. I can tell you this I am a cameraperson and not a writer you will read some run on sentences and possibly many other minor even major grammar errors so please don't hassle me about proper English .

What theantimedia is...is a leak in the system you see not everyone appreciates how the media portrays things in the world and how we are suppose to be objective but most of the time there are subtle slants placed on everyday news.

Lets look at the Scott Peterson trial for example this is like the white version of the OJ trial, with all the homicides why do we give a shit about this murder... I am missing the whole point here, thank God the judge had the sense of mind to ban cameras from the courtroom because this would have become a three ring circus oh wait... too late.

Local media sucks is one of the shirts we offer on http://www.cafepress.com/theantimedia because there has been a consistent breakdown of local news. I know I live it in 3D. I am on the front line when it comes to getting the finger while out in the field, and if one more person spits at me I am going to loose it!

While I believe that it is important for the media to keep government in check with a sort of checks and balances some stuff is just bizarre..I will be back with more input later if you have any comments please feel free to post.