Noteworthy in the media

To all of my students still interested in improving their skills of interviewing, two pieces on today’s (12.15.24) CBS Sunday Morning are a master’s class.

The first from David Martin in a profile of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the second from Tracy Smith in an assessment of the talent of Nicole Kidman are well worth studying.

The reporter’s innate curiosity, authenticity, poise and focus are all to be emulated. The structure of their questions, their brevity and insight are noteworthy.

Even their on camera questions, bridges, and cutaways are executed so very well.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sunday-morning/

And the beat goes on… and on

Just when I (foolishly, naively?) thought there couldn’t be yet another attempt to market the presidency, imagine my surprise to discover: Trump Fragrances.

https://gettrumpfragrances.com/

From Bibles to fragrances, airlines, steaks, vodkas, even University degrees, the Donald’s shopping list goes on to add new ventures…tho the eua de parfume is getting a bit thick.

With apologies to Sonny and Cher, these lyrics canter through my mind:
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-da

And the beat goes on (yes, the beat goes on)
And the beat goes on (and the beat goes on, on, on, on, on)
The beat goes on
And the beat goes on

The beat of all this commerce in the guise of government is hurting my head.

I feel as if we have returned to the Medieval Ages where one can buy indulgences from the church and crown. Is there a difference today?

Soliciting (demanding) money from donors for Inauguration Ball tickets is not unusual, it just seems the sums (thank you Elon, Jeff and many others) have become extraordinary.

It’s OK to market a political campaign, but I am left to wonder, after you win… after you pay the bills, when does it stop?

When does the Office of the Presidency become beyond price?

When does a man who is ostensibly serving his country decide that obsessively seeking greater profit is enough?

Investing in technology instead of human assets is bad for news and the public

LATimes owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has revealed and boasted about his plans to add a button to check the bias of articles written for his newspaper.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/los-angeles-times-owner-bias-meter-1236078458/


I’m confused…. Isn’t it the inherent role of media to present both sides of a story?
Isn’t that what journalists – trained and educated and practiced journalists – already do?

Soon-Shiong is admitting that he doesn’t trust the reporters on his payroll to present the news. Huh? What a revelation! He’s willingly paying people he thinks aren’t doing their jobs!
Have we reached a new depth of corporate insanity?


I see an even greater danger in aggregating viewpoints from AI, which hardly can distinguish truth from hallucinations itself, posting amendments or corrections to a story from cyberspace. This isn’t balance but risks making more noise and confusion… This risks perpetuating a universe of ‘alternative facts.’ Once upon a time, those of us in television news would decry an audience who believed anything they saw when the set box lights flickered. Relying on a bias meter seems equally preposterous.


Methinks his money might be better spent investing in the paper with more reporters and editors and less reliance in a faux technological solution.

Try Apologizing!

After all else fails, it’s still not too late and best to remember the truth was always the best alternative.

When deep in the middle of a crisis, acknowledge your responsibility and even complicity, and pledge to make a clean sweep of whatever are the causes.

I provide crisis training for clients and so am admittedly watching United Healthcare closely, tho I am not involved professionally.

I am puzzled by the apparent silence from United Healthcare’s corporate communications in the wake of this crisis. (Visual analogy: ostrich).
What can they be waiting for, unless they concede their reputation is beyond repair?

At first, it would have been ‘easy’ to play the victim card… their CEO was viciously assassinated. Now they can play the victim card again, that their business is the target of a deranged attacker.

But when will they address the real problem? So many of their customers hate their business practices and those of the healthcare insurance industry at large. What do you do to fix a tattered reputation when your brand appears to be despised?

I’m skeptical that silence is the solution. I have better ideas, not that anyone has asked me.

Media Coverage of Political Regimes: A Study on Vietnam and Syria

Watching the news…
I see parallels between the fall of South Vietnam in the spring 1975 and the equally stunning collapse of the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad within the last fortnight.
I see similarities in political regimes rotted by corruption and propped up by foreign powers motivated by their own fears, ideologies and self-interests.
I see decades long totalitarianism – over a half century for Syria – and 30 years of foreign colonialism in Indochina post WW2 – finally unraveling as their once vaunted armies abandon their posts and tear away their uniforms to obscure their identities.
I see an apparent collapse of the intelligence organization, or its willingness to deceive its minders.
I see jails being liberated of political prisoners and senses of joy and relief by a populace which feels it is finally free to embrace the future.

One difference… the global press corps has done a responsible job of years-long critical coverage of the Assad regime… I don’t remember an American press corps equally critical of its South Vietnamese puppets culminating with the fall of “Big Minh” (Dương Văn Minh)

(And yes… there are parallels too between the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate… among other world conflicts…)

It proves the stink and the plague of corruption at the core will rightly, inevitably be unsustainable. But we should not be shocked… tho we should feel profound sadness for the pain and suffering endured by its citizens, the ultimate victims.

What I find tragic is the American press corp has largely abandoned its foreign posts decried for being economically unsustainable and for management’s assessment that US isolationism doesn’t warrant the time, space or expense of offering a diet of global news. We are too ignorant, in some cases like ostriches choosing the bury our heads, lest we confront realities which are too unpleasant for conversation or action that loom in our path.

Is there anything on our horizon which augurs change?

A Stark Reminder that all Social Media is NOT Journalism

A strain of social media appears to be legitimizing the NY insurance CEO’s assassin as a hero; he’s a Don Quixote character striking a revenge-blow against the establishment of big insurance.

But… free speech is great, of course, but do we now turn or subscribe to social media to affirm – as judge and jury – what price should be paid for a company’s conduct?

Is this legitimate media? Is this even civilized discourse?
Is assassination in the street a new form of justice that should be considered, much less praised?

Social media has a value, but some of these posts more closely resemble the revenge-seeking, blood-thirsty crowd at the Roman coliseum signaling their cavalier preference for some one else’s life with a thumbs down.

When is enough babbling enough? I don’t see this as a blow to the insurance titans that will in some way compel them to review their policies to be more human. Is a slaughter in the streets in any way a more human approach to life…

This company might be horrible.. their leadership culture avaricious… but can you legitimately ascribe a multitude of business decisions to just one man?

I’d remind these new media writers who seek to be opinion leaders to also consider that he was a husband, a father… he didn’t deserve to die like a dog in the gutter.
How can any one accept this as legitimate media and not just decry it as malicious and unworthy gossip? At what point… do we decide that garnering clicks for saying outrageous things are just wrong?

Causing Trauma on Live TV; NBC Makes a Child Cry

A New Low on Live TV

It’s not permissible for any adult to make a child cry — anywhere, and especially not by a professional team of journalists on live, network television and stay on the shot, continuing the interview even as the guest breaks down.

Shame on the TODAY show. Shame on the hosts, the field producers, and the control room because they should have known better.

NBC’s TODAY Show interviewed a survivor of yesterday’s shooting at a Florida high school beginning by asking the condition of her best friend who was shot next to her.
The young woman, just a junior of perhaps 15 or 16 years, softly answered, “she didn’t make it.”

As any one would, her lips quivered. Her eyes watered. She wiped her face with the sleeve of he sweatshirt.

Yet NBC chose to stay on a single picture of her for an interminable several seconds before going to double boxes showing the hosts in Korea along side the student as she broke down and tried to regain composure.

Rather than simply end the interview, NBC chose to continue. It felt more exploitative than journalistic inquiry.

Rather than say, “we’ll be back in a moment” with the decency to allow her to recover her composure, NBC stayed on their shot to continue the interview. Whether the young girl wanted to stay or go, as a child she was given no choice, the adults offered her no option.

Would it have been reasonable for her to know she had a choice?
Would it be defensible for the network to say, “well, she could have asked to end it?”

To her credit, the young woman did recover but had to do so before millions of the audience.
To her credit, the young woman was an eye witness who had valuable insight to share. And she did.

It’s just not to NBC’s credit that it risked causing her trauma and embarrassment in order to save their interview. They continued the interview while professing “their sorrow for her loss,” but the fact is, they continued.

An unanswered question? Why didn’t the producer in Florida tell the control room and anchors in New York NOT to ask about her friend, that “the friend had died.”

Or worse, did they know and chose to ask the question? Whenever I produced network live shots, and I was responsible for hundreds over 30+ years, I made it my responsibility to tell the program when/if there were ‘hot buttons’ to be aware of, mindful for, and how to handle lest we trespass over someone’s emotional line.

An unanswered question? Was there any consideration of changing the program as it played across other time zones? A thought that perhaps if this was a bit raw when aired live in the East, it ought to be edited or deleted or framed with a new introduction before it played in the Central, Mountain or Pacific time zones?
And for any who might say this is fair game, that “we need to see the faces of victims” and “understand the horror of a school shooting, in order to appreciate the damage.” Phooey.

There is never an excuse for professional journalists to add to a victim’s pain.

There is never a sufficient apology for “not knowing” what someone is about to say, especially on live TV.
There is a higher duty for all professional journalists to make their coverage as immersive as possible, but always within the boundaries of human decency.

Sadly it seems that NBC’s TODAY show plumbed new depths of what appears to be exploitative television.

 

The Missing Story: Maybe the fact is – if there is a nuclear attack, there may be nothing the public can do to save itself. Maybe that’s the story no one wants to really look at.

The most alarming picture Sunday from Hawaii experiencing an incoming ballistic missile wasn’t the highway billboards or chyron crawl over a sport program on local TV, but rather the panic in the streets. People were running for their lives, hiding in bathrooms or closets, and saying “good byes” to their families. Why or where were they running, or simply – in a nuclear attack – would it have mattered?

And why isn’t that the most prominent question for Day 2 of this story?

While the cause of Sunday’s false missile alarm in Hawaii needs to be investigated, even more shocking is the fact that no one seems to have known what to do, where to go, or how to react.

And that confusion and panic is frighteningly still unaddressed in news coverage.

It is knee-jerk to point fingers and decry the accident. And goodness knows there are been countless ‘national security consultants’ who have flooded the airwaves wringing their hands offering arm chair speculation about the accident safely from Washington, a distance of 4,826 miles from Honolulu. But their emotionally delivered insight hasn’t shed any light on the larger question… in this day and age of ever-larger nuclear buttons on desktops, what is left for the rest of us to actually do?

Many in the news business will recall the hackneyed phrase oft-spoken when there is a screw up on air, “Broadcasting will stop while we assess the damage and assign the blame.”
Today we are witnessing the mea culpa, the governor taking responsibility, the President assuring us “we’re going to get involved” in the inquiry, but really. So what?

The recent wildfires in California, the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Houston and more remind us of the necessity of having an escape route from imminent danger along with packed bags of our most important papers. But in a nuclear attack… escape where? And will there be any one left to inspect our papers.

Anyone growing up in the 50’s and 60’s will remember Bert the Turtle and “Duck and Cover.” Many of us remember practicing in our classrooms hiding under desks while being shooed away from the windows. As if, now looking back on that, would it have mattered in the least? There was a day when the yellow and black nuclear fallout shelter signs adorned buildings on every block… today, I wouldn’t know where to even look for a shelter in my community.

Once again, a lot of media is focused on the ‘what happened,’ or the ‘how did it happen”? Both are important questions but fall short of the more important — so what do we do?

Absent the distraction of politics or personality in either Washington or Pyongyang, Sunday’s incident in Hawaii proves that we may have early warning detection systems… even notification protocols… but what is it the public is supposed to do to save itself?

And why isn’t that prominently included in today’s media coverage?

As an old assignment managing editor, I’m just asking…

Why does the public think media misbehavior is new? Or is the media to blame?

Lauren McGaughy has written a thoughtful story in the Dallas Morning News about how the media’s onslaught on a story can be as traumatizing as the tragedy they’re covering.

A town, even a neighborhood is transformed by a media scrum, and as a consequence the media often gets a black eye in the aftermath.

Sure stories like this are often true, or have an element of truth to them. More true now by electronic media than even 30 years ago when there were just 3 networks and a handful of local affiliates, contrasted now to 5 major English language networks (6 if you include the Associate Press’ TV service), 2 Spanish language domestic networks, and literally scores of stations reporting in multiple languages to a global audience.

Plus radio… plus wire services… plus newspapers.

It is easy to criticize all this. The din of the media is overwhelming. The press of the pack is as unrelenting as their deadlines.

Live shots, exclusives, TV bookers clicking along the sidewalks searching for and enticing victims and their families with free trips to New York to sit on the set of morning talk shows where anchors can profess their emotion and sorrow, sometimes even offered on behalf of “all of us” in TV land.

We do live in an era where the technology has altered the way stories are covered. What used to be a more measured, even methodical pace has been transformed into an unimaginable pressure cooker of competition for the infamous and unrelenting 24/7 news cycle.

The audience expects, partly because we in the media have created this expectation, that entire stories from crime to investigation to resolution can be completed in a day, or perhaps as quickly as a 48 minute episode of Law and Order.

But Ms. McGaughy, criticism of the media is not new. The earliest reference to press-misbehavior (that I can remember) stems from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page. But in this single graph it reminds us that we should keep check on our behavior with an eye to the larger picture of life.

“Bunch of crazy buttinskies with dandruff on their shoulders and holes in their
pants.
Peeking through keyholes, waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them
what they think about Aimee Semple McPherson.
Stealing pictures off old ladies of their daughters that get raped in Oak Park.
And for what?
So a million shop girls and motormen’s wives can get their jollies.
And the next day, somebody wraps the front page around a dead mackerel.”

The people of Sutherland Springs certainly did not ask for the spotlight on their community. They deserved to be treated fairly and professionally, their stories shared but their grief not exploited.

Ethics classes and discussions can prepare this intellectually, but some of that seems to be bent and challenged in real world applications. We’d like to see all this in Manichean terms but we live out lives in the nuance of grey, and can only do our best to do it well in every respect.