As a young journalist, I found this post really spoke to me, but when reading the comments, many of them seemed rather defensive.

I’ll be honest, I don’t watch much broadcast news, and the broadcast news I do catch is national (CNN, Fox News — not usually by choice). I just don’t find it very trustworthy, and I question the kind of news judgment that gets Obama’s pastor talked about for weeks and little focus on real issues in this election like education or the national debt.

-Pattie

>I agree with the post that said a journalist’s job is to report both sides, present a complete picture, and let the reader decide what to think.

Except take a situation you have two sides. One side is clearly, obviously lying. But both sides say the other is lying. The evidence provided by one side is clearly a lie; not allegedly a lie. So you just say “both sides say the other is lying?” Or do you do an independent investigation of the claims?

Or take a situation now in the news. The expert specialists who have spent their lives studying planetary atmospheric science say that human activity is changing the climate, with potentially catastrophic results. A Danish business school adjunct professor says this is wrong. Equal emphasis to both sides?

TV news is a restrictive form – it’s like a sonata, haiku, comic strip in the paper or, closest to my heart, like a blues song.

A reporter goes out and ‘plays’ the same handful of tunes each night – a murder, a government meeting, a story about gas prices.

The trick that separates the good from the not-so-good is what you do within the form, how you find the new detail, what part of the story gets your attention, what the words are and how you say them, the look on someone’s face when you ask a question on camera, the dozens of little ways one report is distinguished from another.

It’s not, as a rule, how you re-invent it.

And because you’re like a blues or jazz musician, and you’re out playing every night, (I know there’s a certain mythologizing at work here), you can expect to suck on occasion, be brilliant once in a blue moon and be fighting it to a draw most of the time.

Which also means that what counts is the long haul, and that people both want the story and the story-teller, if you’re doing your job right.

I hope the above doesn’t sound silly, but it really is how I view the work and what I try to pass on. We could do with a little less of “it’s bankrupt” and a little more of “how do we make it sing?”

best,

Scott Atkinson
News Director
WWNY TV
Watertown NY

Too often, I fear, we presume that the public needs to be told how to think. We don’t give them enough credit for being able to think for themselves.

I believe that this practice of drawing conclusions has added to the distrust of the media because those conclusions aren’t always accurate. Why open yourself up to that possibility instead of sticking to your job? The public doesn’t ask us for our opinion, only the truth of both sides.

I keep thinking that some hot young tv reporter is going to get a copy of PowerPoint and think – you know, I could do something with this that would actually have some weight – it would have visuals, but it would tell the story. And then I hear the hack editor tell her to cover the 5-car pileup at the bridge.

It sounds like his students don’t know the difference and don’t care; all they rail about is content and delivery… so now they’re supposed to be the new wave, the romantic Gen Nexter geniuses because they want to be cool and do the Daily Show? These young hucksters–actually the ones before them–are the reason that broadcast news is in the state it’s in. They don’t have an ingrained journalistic compass TO TRY AND KEEP THEIR OWN BIASES OUT OF THE STORY AND TO GO THE EXTRA MILE FOR ACCURACY AND SOURCED INFORMATION.

This professor should be pounding into his students that the Daily Show is NOT NEWS, it is ENTERTAINMENT and they shouldn’t be pretending it is news because it’s fun hip and cool. NEWS is that unvarnished, boring communication of facts that inform the public. THIS IS A RESPONSIBILITY AS MUCH AS IT IS A JOB AND (FOR THESE KIDS AT LEAST) SOME KIND OF COOL FRAT GAME.

My kids get all their news online or from the Daily Show or Colbert.

The inverted pyramid is still absolutely essential to the gathering of news. It’s not a dead form, but it’s a way of thinking about what’s most critical, a triage system if you will. TV and radio need it. The Internet needs it. Jon Stewart is great, but I prefer Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times. Lichtblau (who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 has employed traditional journalistic values and done the nation proud. I wll always urge students to read, read, read.

Only the headlines make it to TV oftentimes.

Best regards,

Sara-Ellen Amster, Ph.D.
Lead faculty for journalism program
National University

I weep for our future.