by Chris Walters
“Have
you heard the news?” he said with a grin, “The Vice-President’s gone
mad!”
“Where?” “Downtown.” “When?” “Last night.” “Hmm, say, that’s too bad!”
“Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it,” said the neighbor, “It’s just
something we’re gonna have to forget.”
— Bob Dylan, “Clothes Line Saga”
It was clear from the
outset that this job would involve a pastime I’d always neglected — watching
the local news on television. True, I’d dropped in from time to time to marvel
at K-EYE’s Batman set (aka the Fritz Lang Playscape), or to see if my
street made the grade last fall when a wrath-of-God number rolled through and
mauled trees like they were wet bar napkins. Otherwise, the schedule conflict
with All Things Considered killed any stray thoughts of tuning in.
ATC may have turned into earwash since National Public Radio’s funding
was threatened, but there’s always some real narrative and fine essays.
Now, however, I know what I was missing. In the past six weeks, I have been
instructed how to avoid fouling local creeks (don’t pour awful crap into the
gutter), how to avoid food poisoning (check expiration dates, cook meat
thoroughly, wash up), how to avoid auto theft (locks, serial numbers), and how
to avoid crime in general (live in a city with a low crime rate). I have
received many, many basic tips on child-rearing, helping me become a more
attentive dog owner. I have seen enough coverage of horrible local crimes to
conclude that nobody here is achieving the standard of viciousness set by New
Yorkers in the late 19th century. I have seen attractive footage of local
events that looked like fun, scary footage of power-boat fetishists at play,
and of the drought-ravaged landscape. I have seen coverage of important issues
— such as runamok school budgets, the cable contract renegotiation, and city
council elections — that suggested a big toe quickly sampling cold water. I
have seen weather that barely changes from one day to the next receive
incredibly detailed analysis. I have seen sports coverage. Like all sports
coverage, it reminded me that a lot of random energy gets expended out there.
For a media critic, local TV news presents a real puzzler. The easy road —
savaging it for stories blown, facts elided, and all-over irrelevance — is
also the least attractive. So much of it is bad that it’s hard to know where to
begin, and getting lost along the way is a constant danger. Besides, that
approach hardly seems fair. Local news on TV simply doesn’t have much to do
with news, unless the term is stretched to the point where it loses all
meaning. Its study is really a job for a cultural anthropologist, who would
probably note that the broadcasts are set up like a surrogate family, with
mommy and daddy (the anchors), the friendly uncle (weather person), loony
teenagers (sports guys) and assorted helpful neighbors (reporters) all doing
their bit. They advance the overarching theme of a big, happily extended family
(the city) that faces numerous perils and problems, most of which can be
avoided or solved by deploying proper safety procedures. They reassure the rest
of us that we are important, and that despite everything, the essential tasks
of the family go on, everyone cheerfully working, raising children, having fun,
or trying to help those who have lost their way.
“They say to themselves, `This can’t do any harm.’ We see evidence every day
that there are people who need to be constantly reminded not to do things like
pour oil down their drain,” a broadcasting veteran told me. “Every news
director says, `We’re trying to do something for everyone.’ There’s a great
unanimity of attitude towards these questions. You can say they’re cynical, or
you can say they have a highly developed sense of reality. They see it as a
no-win situation to be in the position they’re in and try to make it better.”
A recent encounter with a local news director suggests he is right. When
Carole Kneeland, the lead architect of KVUE-24’s move away from automatic crime
coverage, spoke at a Society of Professional Journalists meeting a few weeks
ago, cynicism was nowhere in evidence. She came across as a decent and
thoughtful person who works in a field where even small deviations from formula
are suspect, and, with the help of her colleagues at the station, tried to
change what she could anyway. She was obviously relieved that the change was
well received by the viewers and members of the other media; otherwise she
would be printing up new resum�s. That her gamble paid off should
surprise no one outside the field, for the audience couldn’t possibly be as
stupid and fearful as the TV news tradition would have us believe.
Kneeland’s account inadvertently suggested what a bizarre world TV news
workers inhabit. The decision not to run a story on three drunks who shot each
other to death in a rural fleabag, for instance, took up the better part of two
days of checking it out and agonizing over whether it belonged on the air. The
decision not to run the piece was an admirable break with kneejerk news
tradition, and it highlighted the sleaze-mongering of the other stations. Yet
Kneeland was willing to admit that good intentions can defeat good journalism.
Although the shootout had no news value, it was interesting as a story. A
talented reporter could have made it into a witty piece on how life imitates
Quentin Tarantino.
Having assaulted one TV news shibboleth and emerged unscathed, Kneeland seemed
reluctant to take on any others in the near future. Someone asked her if she
thought dropping sports from the broadcast or reducing it to a few local scores
would hurt the show’s ratings, since fans of national sports get their fix from
the 24-hour cable networks. She said she thought it probably wouldn’t matter,
but she wasn’t quite ready to risk losing her job over it. I asked her why TV
news only touched on the obvious facts of political stories when some of the
stories behind the facts, such as the power of campaign consultants, are
potentially fascinating. She answered that informing parents about things like
hazardous day care situations was perceived as more important, tacitly
affirming how much the struggling-but-happy-family model holds her field in its
sway.
Maybe the question was
frivolous, but I don’t think so. 60 Minutes has clobbered the national
competition for decades, yet local news shows don’t even try to emulate its
format. Granted, they probably could not afford to do that kind of story more
than once a week or once every two weeks. The closest they’ve come was the
series K-EYE mounted on the Samsung Corporation, a lavish effort that included
footage shot in Korea, the local reporter guy bouncing around the company
compound watching mass calisthenics and the like. Unfortunately, the series
gushed over its subject to the point of looking like it was produced by
Samsung’s publicity department — not the kind of thing that made a name for
Mike Wallace. K-EYE could have embarassed itself on one-tenth the budget.
But I don’t think production budgets hold the key. Dan Streible, a friend who
teaches broadcasting at the state university in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, offers a
better explanation. Streible came to the job from a background in film
scholarship along with some work in radio and TV, and for many of his students,
the courses are only electives. So he is able to teach outside the broadcasting
news lockstep and experiment with different approaches.
First he took his students through the history of radio and television news
with some newspaper lore thrown in, exposing them to lots of pointed analysis
and critique of the prevailing Action News format. Then he gave them
assignments, making it clear they did not have the time and length constraints
of a real news broadcast. To his surprise, the students turned right around and
replicated standard news stories as seen on local TV all over the country. Even
for students who had no broadcast careers to consider, the Action News model
was so deeply ingrained that they didn’t attempt much deviation. A female
student who turned in better sports coverage than her male counterparts told
him she wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of female sports reporters.
During this year’s spring semester, however, a new tack yielded gratifying
results. Instead of analysis and critique, he showed his students a wide
variety of nonfiction films, ranging from news pieces to independent
documentaries from the last three decades. This time, the news assignments
resulted in stories that were original both in topic selection and visual
approach.
“I guess what I’m learning is that if you give people a diet of unconventional
stuff over time, they can internalize it and actually come up with something
innovative themselves,” Streible told me. “But if you spend a lot of time
analyzing and critiquing what they already know very well, then they’re less
able to practice alternatives. They may know what the shortcomings are, but
they’re not as prepared to invent new practices.” Almost needless to say, the
course structure that didn’t produce bold work is closer to what most students
on a broadcast career track will encounter. Until the digital information craze
finishes it off, the ersatz happy families will hold their place at
six-o’clock, smiling, looking anxious, reminding us to keep the kids’ hands
away from the garbage disposal. n
This article appears in July 5 • 1996 and July 5 • 1996 (Cover).