Flagging station tries reinventing TV news with home-video tech

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 ?

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

KRON - got their number?

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

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

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

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

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.