— Andrew Levy (Andrew@mediachannel.org), Editor

The following was excerpted from Chapter 2 of "Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time Online World," by Philip Seib (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001).

Whether the subject of coverage is a warehouse fire, police raid, or other such event, the problem for serious journalists is the relegation of news judgment to a secondary status while technological capabilities become determinative. The theory in many newsrooms seems to be that if it's happening now and we can get live pictures, then it's newsworthy. Because of the uncertainty of outcome, live coverage may be intrinsically interesting, but importance tends to get lost in the rush to go live. As Ted Koppel has said, "The technological tail is wagging the editorial dog."

This rearrangement of priorities that overemphasizes the trivial often means presenting a distorted picture to news consumers. The news of the day appears to consist of a series of spectacularly picturesque events, stunning in their immediacy but empty in their longer-term implications. This is television news at its show biz worst, falsely assigning significance to inconsequential happenings. As portrayed by this kind of coverage, the world looks like an action movie, with fires, car chases, SWAT teams on the move, victims howling, villains snarling, and so on. Viewers are likely to react with mixed excitement and fear. Most important, they are likely to keep watching.

Of course, the world is not an action movie, and most newscast viewers will find that their lives are untouched by the thrilling, frightening tales they see unfolding on the screen. If they stop to think about it, they will realize this (and be thankful). But if they watch enough of this kind of coverage, they may begin to see their world through a distorted lens. If madmen are being chased along the highway, perhaps it is not safe to drive. If so many crimes are being committed on the streets, maybe it would be wise just to stay home (and buy some new locks and a gun or two) and watch the evils of the world on television, viewing them electronically but also staying safely removed from the dangers they pose.

How the public reacts to the cumulative messages of news may or may not be the responsibility of news organizations. On the one hand, if the stories being broadcast are accurate, then the journalists have done their job and it is up to the viewers to decide for themselves how much importance to attach to the news. On the other hand, if depictions of community life have been skewed by news organizations' sensation-oriented coverage, and if news consumers are reacting to this version of "reality," then journalists may bear some responsibility for that reaction. If, for example, disproportionate coverage (live and otherwise) of crime produces disproportionate fear of crime among audience members, can journalists simply shrug that off? "Let the viewer beware" is a convenient response, but it may be an ethical cop-out.

The newsworthiness debate, therefore, proceeds on several levels. On one, the concern is about covering events that may be interesting but are relatively unimportant and may squeeze out coverage of more significant matters. On another, the issue is the quantity of coverage, particularly when news consumers are being told explicitly or implicitly that the topic at hand is more important than it really is.

At the root of these problems is the fixation on "spot news," that is, a breaking story. Spot news is unpredictable, and a sudden twist in the story may catch journalists and their viewers unprepared. Since there is no time for exercising editorial judgment in real-time reporting, the out-of-control event roars wildly into the audience's living rooms.

An example of this occurred in Los Angeles in 1998. An armed man shut down a freeway shortly before rush hour, pointing a gun at passing cars and firing several rounds (hitting no one). As the police arrived at the scene, so did local television news crews, on the ground and in the air. While the standoff proceeded, six local stations and national cable channel MSNBC carried at least part of the event live, two of them interrupting after-school children's programming to do so. Finally, the man propped a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

Coverage of this event provoked the usual reaction: protests from viewers, apologies from the stations, and more debate about the perilous nature of live reporting. Los Angeles station KNBC (which is owned by NBC) issued a statement, saying, "We did not anticipate this man's actions in time to cut away, and we deeply regret that any of our viewers saw this tragedy on our air." KNBC reported that it received 2,000 complaints and called each person back to apologize .

Some news managers see such incidents as inevitable when stations are engaged in fierce competition to be first with on-the-spot reporting. Warren Cereghino, executive producer for ChrisCraft Television News Service, owner of Los Angeles station KCOP which carried the suicide, said, "It was bound to happen. Any time you cover something live and unedited you're taking a risk." Jeff Wald, news director at Warner Bros. affiliate KTLA pointed out that at least part of the story needed to be covered: "You have a rush hour where 250,000 people were affected by somebody who was shooting at people on the freeway. That's a news story. Part of our duty is to warn people."

Wald's comment underscores the dilemma TV news managers face. The ratings battle among stations is fought partly by trying to be first at every story in which viewers might be interested. (This is particularly true in an intensely competitive market such as Los Angeles.) The public has come to expect live coverage of breaking stories and presumably will change channels to find the most up-to-the-minute reporting. Even suggestions about using a five-second delay when covering events that could become bloody are viewed with wariness by some in the television news business. They do not want to lag even five seconds behind competitors who might choose not to delay. None of the local news directors said they would stop live coverage of free way chases or other dangerous events, only that they would try to avoid airing violent conclusions of those events.

Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times showed little patience with such policies, writing,

They'll never admit- it perhaps not even to themselves-but Thursday was the day Los Angeles television stations finally got what they wanted .... This time it was the full payoff, the big public splatter, the full shotgun-to-the-head kablooie. And you and your children, Southern California, were able to see it live .... It represents the ultimate horror of the kind of live coverage that is increasingly practiced everywhere. No safety nets. No editing process. No control, just a total abrogation of journalistic responsibility .

For this kind of story the debate centers on two basic issues. How to cover gets the most attention, but whether to cover may be the more difficult question. The first can be addressed with technical changes such as tape delay and using wide shots instead of close-ups, and finally cutting away quickly when a bloody moment appears about to occur. But being too cautious about whether an event is worth covering can conflict with a fundamental journalistic task. Walter Goodman of the New York Times wrote about the Los Angeles suicide coverage:

Journalism has never been a particularly fastidious line of work; that's part of its value and appeal. It is by its nature intrusive and in constant search of excitement .... Journalists have their opportunities to be do-gooders and arbiters of taste, but not at the expense of suppressing news.

In the rush of delivering daily television news, noted Goodman, the best rule is, "When in doubt, cover and carry."

Along similar lines, Cheryl Fair, news director at KABC in Los Angeles, said:

The technology has progressed to the point that it allows the viewer to see more of the process of gathering news .... People are seeing news as it develops. And I'm not sure that's bad. It kind of hits at some of the criticism of the media for slanting the news. You can't say it was slanted when it's live.

Perhaps live reporting is, as Fair suggested, a purer form of journalism. Or perhaps that rationale is merely a way to avoid making tough editorial decisions. Even if news coverage is supposed to mirror what has happened or is happening, journalists must decide where to place the mirror. Failure to exercise thoughtful control over the positioning of the mirror and the delivery of the image it captures means providing a product that is "unedited" in the word's truest sense.

To take this point a step farther, an argument can be made that at least some live coverage is not really journalism at all. It is voyeurism. Journalism is a process: gathering information, analyzing its veracity and importance, acquiring supplemental information, and then putting it in an understandable, useful form for delivery to the public. Live coverage can short-circuit that process, going from gathering to delivery with nothing in between. This may use the technological tools of modern journalism, but it is not necessarily journalism itself.

The Los Angeles suicide coverage was not an isolated case. Just a month later another Los Angeles freeway incident presented news stations with the same kind of problem. A driver later identified as a Los Angeles police officer distraught about personal matters-led police on a chase before apparently intentionally driving her car into a freeway piling, killing herself. One station carried the chase and crash live; others used tape of it on their newscasts.

Many stations around the country continue to get caught up in the drama of chases and other spot news. Presented with reporters' attention-grabbing breathlessness, real or feigned, these stories have become the stylistic trademarks of some local television news operations.

— Philip Seib is the Lucius W. Nieman Professor of Journalism at Marquette University, a veteran television and newspaper journalist covering politics and social issues and the author of "Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001).

This essay was excerpted from the book "Going Live — Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World" by Philip Seib. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted with permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

BUY THIS BOOK  |  BROWSE OTHER BOOKS

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.