Journalism for the Marketplace
HOTTELET, RICHARD C.
Journalism for the Marketplace Newswatch: How TV Decides the News By Av Westin Simon & Schuster. 274 pp. $15.95. Reviewed by Richard C. Hottelet UN Correspondent, CBS News Before you begin...
...It is next to impossible to report more than one story at a time, or to allow the public the leisure to absorb complex treatments...
...Too many of the men and women were 'firemen...
...By its nature, the electronic medium is also more volatile...
...He also explains the rating sweeps and the way TV consultants have peopled America's anchor desks with blow-dried and often empty male heads, flanked by Barbie-doll partners and appropriate ethnic accessories...
...Some of these people are thoughtful and talented...
...There is no doubt that ABC's choice was correct (and CBS subsequently featured Bing Crosby's demise)—not by Westin's yardstick, but in the light of the more natural judgment that names make news...
...They cope in public view, often admirably...
...If my wife, children and loved ones are safe, what has happened in the past 24 hours to shock them, amuse them, or make them better off than they were...
...Are my city and home safe...
...See It Now, the series that paired Murrow's monumental integrity with the production talents of Fred Friendly, was decades ahead of its time...
...The author may have intended to advertise an essential ambivalence...
...The day Elvis Presley died, that story led off ABC's evening broadcast...
...Indeed, for those interested in how the wheels go round in videoland, this insider's story is worth reading...
...some are neither...
...On the plane ride to Belfast, he turned to his producer and remarked that he had been doing some reading about the subject...
...He answers both questions, but the second more completely and satisfactorily than the first...
...Westin does catalogue the complexities of reporting for television, which make print journalism seem like nirvana...
...Television is too young and its life has been too helter skelter for it to have built up any great body of journalistic tradition...
...Westin himself indicates that he knows better by heading his chapter on local news "What Sells is Good...
...Congratulations...
...Westin vividly describes, for example, the coverage of the attempted assassinations of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in 1980...
...Are we going anywhere near there?'" In the past 10 years, Westin assures us, steps have been taken to rectify the situation: "Senior news department executives at networks and at the larger local stations made a conscious effort to assemble a blend of talents for the Class of '80...
...With remarkable detachment for a man who was striving to produce quality broadcasting, Westin records that "by the '70s, news staffs were filled with younger, good-looking go-getters who could cover stories but not necessarily analyze them...
...And Westin's detailed description of the TV news hierarchy reveals that the key figure in this process is the executive producer—a label derived, incidentally, from Hollywood...
...Av Westin, a veteran television producer now at ABC News, describes life in a professional Procrustean bed...
...The role of these consultants, with their interchangeable stables of "personalities," is a sordid revelation...
...The others seem to be about as important as the male gypsy moth...
...No equivalent has yet been found to a six-column front page that the eye may roam over, spotcheck, read and re-read...
...He cites one case "where a 'fireman' went overseas for ABC and was sent off to cover the fighting in Northern Ireland...
...In addition, he tells how the show business imperative, the reaching for the widest possible audience to meet the enormous overhead, intrudes on the news operation...
...Broadcasting does carry something of an additional burden, though, in having to function under government operating and ownership regulations that are not applicable to newspapers and magazines...
...Television news involves a constant struggle between journalism and show business...
...A necessarily sequential format makes television (and radio) less flexible than print in a sense, too...
...Under the American system, all reporting must justify itself in the marketplace...
...Westin offers a rather pompous guide for what the audience ought to learn from an evening newscast: "Is my world safe...
...An-chorpersons, the stars, have varying degrees of influence over the makeup of news shows by virtue of a privileged relationship with the executive producer...
...CBS went ahead as planned with an opening segment on the controversy surrounding the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty—an agreement that promised to lance a dangerous boil in U.S.-Latin American relations...
...By contrast the correspondents, who are professional journalists, are depicted by Westin as almost incidental...
...As the last to see footage before it goes on the air, they can get their employers into or keep them out of terrible trouble...
...and while the marketplace is not the Academy of Athens, the cost of adapting to it is a small price to pay for the freedom that it—and no other means of support?makes possible...
...so it is only reasonable for broadcasting organizations to forge close links with them...
...Still, the producers rank as "management...
...On the next page Westin recounts a dispute between ABC and CBS that would seem to contradict his formula...
...He sheds light here on an aspect of the industry that remains largely unknown to the layman, the give and take between a network—restricted by the Federal Communications Act to outright ownership of a handful of stations—and the independent entrepreneurs who operate regional affiliates...
...Ma-teria'l is too often stretched or cut, and the need, or temptation, to do likewise with standards arises not infrequently...
...One surprising omission from Newswatch is any examination of Edward R. Murrow's role in setting standards of both content and presentation for successful television journalism...
...Judgment remains the standard?intelligent, knowledgable, experienced assessment of how many lives will be touched by a particular tale from any quarter of our shrunken world...
...It is mentioned only twice, and then to recall the technical stunt of bringing live pictures of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans together in one control room...
...This brings us to the matter of how TV decides what to report...
...One seasoned executive producer recently dismissed most of them as "picture jockeys," lacking the education and professional background to dominate and differentiate the material they dealt with...
...Yet in this it does not differ that much from print...
...Under the executive producer, producers of assorted grades are responsible for the different segments of a broadcast...
...He rings the changes on the "Happy News" vogue that dominated local broadcasts a few years ago, suggesting it is past...
...What they need and, happily, tend to get are viewers who think along with them and accept their work at face value...
...Emergencies find broadcasters wrestling with raw material that oscillates from outrageous falsehood to outrageous truth, fragments that they may have no way of labeling as fact, rumor or propaganda...
...Reviewed by Richard C. Hottelet UN Correspondent, CBS News Before you begin reading, you gag slightly at the subtitle...
...Wouldthat wereso...
...A constant flow demands instant response to the unexpected...
...Does it mean how TV decides what is news, or how it decides to present the news...
...They keep mentioning Ulster,' he observed...
Vol. 65 • December 1982 • No. 23
