I was part of a panel hosted by the League of Women Voters this morning. The topic was “the role of the media in a democracy.” Since I was a participant, I didn’t take notes or anything, but Elaine Hopkins did, and her report is here.
One of the most interesting discussions to me came about when one of the audience members asked why TV and radio news broadcasts do not air editorials. I’ve long wondered the same thing. At the Journal Star, of course, they have an editorial page, and the writers give the viewpoint of the paper itself. But television and radio news broadcasters don’t do that. Why not? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know the position of the news editors at all the media outlets?
The answer each of the participants gave was pretty much the same: editorials hurt ratings and lower the credibility of the newscasts. If they posit their opinion on the news of the day, they at worst alienate some viewers/listeners, and at best make their viewers/listeners suspicious of their news coverage. As a follow-up, I asked if they thought that was the case at the Journal Star — did the fact that they give an editorial viewpoint hurt their credibility, in the TV and radio panelists’ view. Answer: yes.
Jonathan Ahl from WCBU-FM stated that it also limits their ability to do their jobs. He told of how he had sat next to four successive Journal Star reporters at City Hall over the years and had witnessed all of them get shunned by mayors and council members — not because of their reporting, but because of the newspaper’s editorial positions. In the end, he said, it’s the reader who gets short-changed. He said he wasn’t willing to limit his ability to get a story by including editorials on the station. He would rather present the information as fair and balanced as possible and let the listeners form their own opinions.
Jody Davis, news director of WMBD-TV, gave examples of how ratings dipped on Sinclair Broadcasting-owned channels when they used to carry right-wing editorial comments from Sinclair officials. Even the bosses at Sinclair recognized the trend and quietly discontinued the editorials. Thus, broadcasters see a lot of potential for editorials to hurt ratings, and little if any value in them.
The morning ended on a somewhat depressing note for me, as I hung around after the meeting and heard about how low morale is at the Journal Star now that Gatehouse has taken over. Many seasoned reporters have left, benefits have been cut, and staff positions are going unfilled. Basically, the newsroom is being slashed through attrition. Jenni Davis moved from the City Hall beat to Lifestyles editor, and they’re not hiring anyone to fill her position. Instead, they’re going to replace her with one of the business reporters. Now there will be two instead of three business reporters; one more position eliminated.
Gatehouse is cutting costs on little things, too. They won’t buy antibacterial liquid soap for the bathrooms anymore, nor will they buy Post-It Notes. That kind of nitpicking at the budget is the sign of a company in serious financial trouble. They’ve overextended themselves by buying so many newspapers, and now they’re trying to cover the cost of their debt any way they can, from cutting staff to business supplies. There is no joy at the paper right now. And that’s sad.
Good reportage of the event, even though you were a participant.
I have never heard one single argument in favor of unsigned editorials that made the slightest bit of sense. OF COURSE they lessen a newspaper’s credibility.
Reference to last paragraph on Gatehouse: Antibacterial soap is the biggest bogus product of recent years. It is not any more effective in cutting down disease than regular soap. It is the rubbing mechanical action of hand washing that removes “germs”; soap merely facilitates this process by loosening debris on the skin by making it slippery. Most folks do not wash nearly long enough; do it for at least one minute and more frequently to protect yourself and those you come in contact. Also antibacterial soap can make bacteria more resistant and therefore more harmful in the future. Therefore I commend Gatehouse Media for not purchasing antibacterial soap at PJS.
You could have concluded by offering Gatehouse a really good idea for a cut – firing the editorial board. That would reduce costs, improve the quality of paper, and increase readership.
Its interesting that CNN/Lou Dobbs and Jack Cafferty and Wolf Blitzer have rebuttal editorials with both good and bad comments included. Doesn’t seem to hurt their ratings one little bit. Some of the comments I have seen sent in are really to the point and don’t mince any words, but they continue to air them showing they are not afraid of any editorials from the public. They take their licks and keep on ticking.
“But television and radio news broadcasters don’t do that. Why not?”
One other reason (not mentioned above but maybe mentioned at the panel) is that it’s much harder in television and radio to provide “signals” to the listener/reader/watcher that you’re doing editorial rather than news. In newspapers they’re confined to a single page, they’re clearly marked, they’re left justified rather than full justified (news is full-justified), etc.
It’s actually the same problem that occasionally occurs with advertising on TV or radio, when the ad looks or sounds SO MUCH like the rest of the news show that people can be misled into thinking it’s news (as happened with those puff pieces the federal government was commissioning to TV stations a couple years ago and the stations used them as drop-ins instead of as ads).
The other thing is that with written media, you can decide if you care about reading something. When you sit down with the PJS you can skim the beginning of a story and go, “Hey, interesting” and read the whole thing or “ugh, yawn, I already know this” and just skip to the next thing. With TV and radio, what you hear and the how long you hear about it is dictated by the newscaster, which means that TV and radio have a LOT less room for stories that will interest a handful of people but bore everyone else to tears. Newspapers can bury those as full-page reports on page 16. Same thing with editorials; if you’re not in the mood for editorials in a newspaper, you just skip that page and go on to other things that interest you. On TV or radio, you have to actually turn the show off and miss whatever else might have been said on the show.
I also think that as a society, we’re no longer accustomed to hearing complicated arguments in spoken form and we expect that sort of thing to be written, which makes people less receptive to a level of complexity in TV or radio that they’d readily accept from a newspaper or newsmagazine. (I personally can hardly ever listen to podcasts, because the whole time I’m just going, “I could read this in half the time and this person’s voice and delivery isn’t so interesting I want to spend 20 minutes with it ….”)
An interesting tangential read; the New York Times is ending it’s paid Times Select service. It will all be free again !!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSWEN101120070918?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&rpc=22&sp=true