On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Jon Delfin <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 5:51 AM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I did not click on each of the links above, but I am going to go out on > a > >> limb and assume that each of the recognized newspapers listed here > clearly > >> indicate that the story comes from AP. That is what credible news > >> organizations do. That is what the local newscasts did not do. > >> > >> I am not criticizing them for putting on a puff entertainment piece, as > you > >> note, newscasts and papers legitimately have those. I criticize them for > >> not being transparent with their viewers, and sacrificing their > credibility. > > > > I see that of the four links that Steve provided, only the SFGate has > > the reporter's byline. (All four credit the AP.) Is this a lack of > > credibility or just a style decision? > > Probably the latter. In the case of the NYT, there's also an element > of "hey, none of our people wrote this" implied.... > Exactly - which, if the standards of local news were higher, one might think would also motivate a simple "CBS Newsource reports that Conan is pushing the envelope..." or something like that. I don't believe that Kent Brockman writes every word he reads on the local news, and I don't think it is an ethical duty to identify the author of every word. I do believe that the audience has a right to assume that every word read by a news anchor is the product of the news organization he represents unless otherwise noted. In this particular case there was probably not a major editorial slant to the piece (though the "pushing the envelope" phrase does seem to marginalize gay marriage more than heterosexual marriage - I guess if Conan had married a straight couple it would just have been a rip off of Sanders). But it is not hard to imagine just a slightly different set of circumstances - perhaps from a similar NBC newsservice, and perhaps with a slightly more negative spin on the same story - and suddenly knowing the original source might be not just an abstract principle, but take on a practical significance. It occurs to me now that some on this list might actually work in local news, and that my comments may have come across as a personal attack. That has not been my intention. I can not apologize for being deeply disappointed in the quality and standards of local newscasts (at least in the Bay Area, which is what I am most familiar with now, and Los Angeles, which I still monitor from time to time). But I do not mean to suggest (though my rhetorical excess somewhere in this thread may in fact have stated this explicitly) that all or most who work in local news are incompetent or lack journalistic skill or ethics. Nor do I mean to suggest that ripping copy from entertainment news services and reading it without attribution is among the most serious symptoms of the serious problems in local newscasts. I do think that the local newscast is a profoundly broken institution, but I freely admit that I am not smart enough to suggest a solution to the underlying economic contributions to the problem (well, I think my main suggestion would work, but would never happen, which is to reconceptualize local news primarily as a public service, not as a major profit center). I tried to suggest earlier that I also work in a system that, if not broken, is seriously flawed. It is hard to do good work in such a system, and hard for the good work you do to get taken seriously. All the more reason for all of us to try to improve the systems we work in. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
