Category: State of the Fourth Estate



By George Merlis

If broadcast journalism is a calling then its patron saint is Edward R. Murrow, the legendary CBS newsman who offered this insight about TV in a 1958 speech: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

In the last two weeks a couple of the human stewards of TV news have been revealed for having made starkly contrasting decisions that demonstrate Murrow’s warning.


First the “wires and lights in a box” decision:

On March 19 National Public Radio revealed that back in August, 2008 ABC News paid $200,000 to Florida mom Casey Anthony for exclusive rights to stills and video of her missing daughter Caylee. Those images were aired on September 5, 2008, first on Good Morning American and later in a prime-time hour-long special. Ironically that was very same day Anthony was charged with child neglect and endangerment. A month later she was indicted for Caylee’s murder. If convicted, Anthony faces the death penalty.



Before and After. Above: Casey Anthony sports an American flag in one of many party girl pictures of her that have surfaced since the murder of her daughter. Unsurprisingly, this was not among the images Anthony sold to ABC News. Below: Anthony weeps in court.



Journalism ethics are clear: news organizations should not pay sources. There are some exceptions to that rule. Someone who takes dramatic footage of an unfolding news event -- like the jetliner landing on the Hudson -- can auction off his material to the highest bidder without running afoul of journalism ethics. In that instance the videographer was covering a story in the absence of journalism professionals. (It is incumbent on the news organization, by the way, to verify that the material is valid, was obtained legitimately and has not been doctored in any way.) But paying someone intimately involved in a news story for access to that story -- in other words, buying the source as well as the source material -- is checkbook journalism and unethical. In fact, even if Caylee had turned up safe and sound and Anthony had been awarded Mother of the Year honors, it would have been unethical for ABC News to cough up that kind of payoff for the stills and photos.

ABC News make matters even worse by not disclosing that it had bought access to the material. Such transparency would have mitigated its ethical lapse a but, But the network kept mum; the story came to light during a hearing when the judge asked how Anthony had come up with bail money and her lawyer revealed it had come from ABC News.

The prodigious payment came hard on the heels of stories about ABC laying off a quarter of its news employees -- between 300 and 400 news division staffers are to be fired. David Westin, president of ABC News was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I frankly don’t think it will be particularly noticeable for viewers.” In addition to splitting two infinitives in a single sentence, Westin is wrong about the facts. It will be noticeable to viewers when his division keeps missing out on big stories or substitutes anchor “tells” for rolling video coverage of major events. Think about this: the $200,000 ABC News spent for its tawdry one-day exclusive would have paid the annual salary and benefits for one well-trained, serious news producer who might have been able to give the network five, ten or twenty good, solid news stories over the course of that year.

This is not the first time a flap has erupted over networks paying news sources. Back in the 1970s, CBS paid Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman as much as $50,000 to sit for an interview with 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace. And even earlier, in the 1960s, NBC News financed the digging of an escape tunnel under the Berlin wall in order to produce a documentary called “The Tunnel.” NBC was involved in nothing less than creating a news event and, coincidentally, risking the lives of many people in doing so. To my mind, the tunnel story was the most serious ethical journalistic lapse since exaggerations and fictions by the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers fed the fervor that led to the Spanish American War.

Now for the flip side of the ABC lapse:

When Tiger Woods finally decided to do a small, select batch of TV interviews, he offered himself to three outlets: The Golf Channel, ESPN and CBS. Despite restrictions on the interview, Golf and ESPN readily accepted. CBS News turned him down. Cold.



CBS to Woods: Thanks but No Thanks!

The decision was made by Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports (and the son of one of the best sports journalists in television history, the late Jim McKay). Woods’ conditions were too restrictive for McManus: the golfer would give each interviewer no more than five minutes of his time and certain personal subjects were off-limits. Every journalist knows it takes more than a five-minute interview to dislodge someone from his rote talking points.

In addition, the timing didn’t work for CBS. The next show up in its news rotation was 60 Minutes on Sunday night. And 60 Minutes does not do superficial, five-minute interviews. Faced with the prospect of Golf Network and ESPN beating it to air with an interview full of canned responses, CBS declined Woods’ offer. We can’t know what the CBS decision would have been had the timing been more propitious for them, but the decision the network did make was the right one.

Incidentally, as of this writing it is being reported that Woods will hold a news conference on Monday, April 5 in advance of the Masters. If he does it will be interesting to see the complete session. It’s likely to tell us as much about the media as it does about the world’s best golfer.

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