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December 13, 1997
DENIAL, MORE THAN EVER Routine, reflexive denial is a common and undignified defense... ...which is typically thrown up by corporate front-men trying to dodge complaints about their products' questionable performance and reliability. It's not a pretty sight from any type of commercial enterprise, but when news executives and their senior journalists duck behind blatantly misleading denials, the embarrassment of strained credibility and trust is that much more acute. After all, news companies are supposed to be in the truth business. This higher calling, however, seems to have been forgotten within the hierarchy of NBC Nightly News, where posturing and obfuscation cloak the ratings-driven development of "news lite" programming. Management's reliance on disinformation came vividly into view December 5th in a story by the L.A. Times' Jane Hall. Detailing gains in viewership by "The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather," the story went on to discuss the differences between hard and soft news -- the latter recognized industry-wide as the staple of NBC's "Nightly News with Tom Brokaw". But from NBC News spokesmen, there were just the same familiar denials. Tom Brokaw was quoted as saying: "The implication that we're not doing hard news simply does not wash." Really ? Tom must be washing with a different brand of soap than the rest of us, including the nation's most authoritative media watchers, who have compiled these facts: The Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, in an August report revealing that the proportion of feature stories on network newscasts has shot up from less than 1% in 1990 to 9% in 1996, stated: "By far the greatest jump occurred on NBC, where features made up one-fifth or 20% of the newscast last year, compared to only 5% on CBS and 4% on ABC." The Center's statisticians also noted that NBC instituted the sharpest cutback in international news. Evidently immune to the weight of all this evidence, Tom Brokaw told the L.A. Times that any differences between NBC and the competition "are at the margins." Andrew Tyndall disagreed, saying that beyond the first 10 minutes of the broadcasts, "there are dramatic differences," such as NBC devoting more than twice as much time covering the Iowa septuplets (32 minutes over two weeks, compared to 12 on CBS and 14 on ABC). By denying in such a cavalier way the slide in content and quality at NBC News, Tom Brokaw and other highly-paid anchors provide an effective smokescreen for the further encroachment by the network's Entertainment Division and its value system into the traditional autonomy of the News Division (see this Reporter's Journal, July 27, 1997: "Protecting" News Content and August 2, 1997: "That Lust for Ratings"). That serves in splendid fashion the interests of the management team put in place by the owner, the General Electric Company. But it deals a devastating blow to the professional journalists at NBC who yearn for a return to the standards and ethics of genuine news reporting -- the practices that once made the network proud as a Peacock, not merely an obedient servant of GE's peculiar brand of corporate militancy. A growing number of good reporters and producers at NBC say that beyond their paychecks, there's little holding them to their jobs -- least of all any hope that the most visible symbols of their programs, the anchors, have any intention of advocating a toughening up and broadening of genuine news gathering. Clearly the opposite is happening. And that's a blow, too, to the aspirations of graduates trying to break into the business. They're seeing jobs and opportunity in real news drying up. The only offers coming their way with any frequency are from "prime time" entertainment-news hybrids, such as Dateline NBC. Though a first job's a first job, buttonholing minor characters from the tabloid dramas that are the mainstay of magazine shows can't hold a candle to the satisfaction of genuine news reporting. That's something that Tom Brokaw should remember -- even as he helps distance the company further and further from its traditions of excellence. |
| Next time... | it's 1998 !!
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