Coverage of the News
March 10th, 2009 by Scott BannonIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our free RSS newsfeed. Thank you for visiting!
Covering The News
Having been jilted (canceled on) by CNBC’s Rick Santelli who was scheduled to appear as a guest, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took less than 9 minutes of air time to not just mock Santelli and all of CNBC, but he also illustrated a point on what’s wrong with much of the “news media” today.
Trading access for honest reporting
It is an occupational hazard for news gatherers that’s as old as the notion of noting and sharing news itself. News gatherers want access to news makers because it’s the easy path to getting the scoops and quotes that nobody else has.
Unfortunately, sometimes that access comes at the trade-off of candid reporting. Who is going to keep giving you access if you keep making them look foolish?
So, news gatherers with great access to specific news makers can become inclined to ‘pitch them softballs’ rather than ask the more important in-depth questions, or to shape the story when they tell it in a way that won’t offend their news maker, all at the expense of giving the public a candid story.
The good news (pun intended) here is that access is rarely an absolute requirement for solid, in-depth reporting. In fact, with smart research (clue sniffing) and an understanding of the beat they cover a news gatherer can dig deep and drill out the facts to develop a good story with.
That’s exactly what Stewart’s staff at the Daily Show did when compiling this piece. They sifted through hours and hours of video to find numerous instances displaying CNBC talking heads smoozing and softballing with CEO’s (and thieves) rather than drilling for the true stories. That’s what makes the bit funny, but it also shows part of the problem with news coverage today.
The lines between access and enabling are too often blurred. Allowing a CEO to send spin through your media when you know the facts contradict what they’re saying, all so that they’ll continue to appear as guests does not lead to good reporting, and doesn’t benefit the people who are looking to you for the story. It’s not just dishonest journalism, it’s a disservice to your customers–the information consumers who believe in you to tell them the facts and truth.
There is another issue which may even be at the core of trading access as well, and that’s the blurring of lines between factoid reporting and feature story telling in recent years.
Nearly every news gatherer in all mediums today has become a feature story teller and allowed, likely encouraged, to inject interpretive commentary into their reporting.
There used to be a clearer line between factoid and feature reporting. Newspapers and Broadcasts maintained a balance between the two for an even mix.
Perhaps it was seen as providing a better user experience for consumers who can more easily relate to conversational story telling over the raw who, what, where, when, how and why format; but it’s also further slanted coverage along ideological lines and fosters an environment where news gatherers are seeming to give less concern to getting all of the facts out than they are with inserting their personal bias through carefully chosen words and phrases.
And this isn’t just a CNBC problem, I haven’t been able to take FOX News nor half of what I hear from CNN and MSNBC seriously in years either. As for Newspapers, I’ve all but given up on the brand publishers and go straight to the wire services for my news. It’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry better and wastes less of my time reading fluff and self-serving pieces.
Feature stories are fine when used in addition to factoid reporting, but we don’t need them on every story.
If a car bomb blows up a Coffee Shop in the Middle East, tell me that. Tell me the who, what, where, when, why and how–and leave your commentary on what this may or may not mean to the latest round of peace talks between So-And-So and What’s-His-Name for your 20 minute round table discussion over at Meet The Press on Sunday. I don’t need it to understand every news story.
It slants the news coverage and wastes my time. If I want personal commentary on every topic, I’ll go to the blogosphere and get it from my peers on a format where I can rebut or discuss the opinions being shared. That’s what the blogging medium excels at.
It shouldn’t be a question of blogs vs. newspapers
This argument has been brewing for quite a while now and some respected journalists have even weighed in with commentary online, but it’s a pointless debate.
Bloggers, even those ambitious enough to enroll in Citizen Journalism classes and workshops aren’t the threat to good investigative journalists. They’re a threat to feature story tellers who fail to go deep enough into the stories they’re covering to make their product better or more vital than perspectives from blogs.
The average blogger has a job and it isn’t blogging. Blogging is what they do in their limited free time. They get their information from the wire services, news sites, other blogs and Press Release distribution outlets and then blog about their interpretations and opinions based on the minimal amount of information they’ve received. They rarely go any further to gather facts because that’s not what they need or want to do as bloggers.
However, journalists for the most part, have the training, experience and resources to report the news far better than almost any blog writer can. Their job is getting the story right and relaying it to the public. They have the resources and time to go deeper into it so that their final product isn’t opinion based on minimal information.
But, why should the public pay attention if they fail to go deeper into the story and create a better product than blog writers are able to?
Access alone doesn’t equal news-worthy. Being employed by a news production company isn’t itself attention-worthy.
Getting to the bottom of stories and providing all the facts, or as many as can be found, in a understandable and unbiased fashion is news reporting and what should be separating more journalists from bloggers.
Anyone can watch the wire services, other web sites or Press Release distributions for information to regurgitate. Educated research and the resources for follow-ups and fact digging is where journalists have the advantage, if more of them were using it wisely maybe more of us would still be paying attention.
I’ll end this here because The Daily Show is about to start…
buxtohispano.com 
2 Responses to “Coverage of the News”
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