Masslaw-broadcast-cable-tv-radio

(Notes by Bill Densmore)

Two panels discussed the state of broadcast, cable TV and radio news, which conference organizers characterized as "inadequate."

"As TV and radio have gotten bad, they've got even worse," said David Boeri, a former Boston TV reporter who is now with WBUR, one of that city's two National Public Radio affiliates.

In TV, said Boeri, in framing what he covered, "it was always the same message -- be afraid, be very, very afraid . . . if television news was a diet, our viewers would have scurvy." With audience numbers falling, TV management is trying to yell louder to keep the audience.

Boeri says local television news is holding it owns in ratings, compared with national TV news. "There is tremendous power in local television and I really do not blame the local viewers."

Addressing corruption within journalism

Kristina Borjesson said she would cut to the bottom line. Journalism is about content. "One of the things we are not facing and that is corruption in our own ranks." Having worked for most of the networks, she has had one story killed twice. "There is corruption in our ranks and we have to address that."

A second problem: A lot of journalists don't have the chops to do difficult stories. "We have a training problem. We have journalist who think reporting is you get one side, the other side and that's it. That's not reporting, that's just coverage."

She says journalists have to learn how to "monetize yourself on on the web" by learning from website operators who have large audiences. "We need to learn from these people and we need to learn it very quickly."

Panelist Robert Ferrante is executive producer of The World, a joint venture of the BBC and WGBH radio in Boston that is heard by more than two million listeners each week on public radio stations nationwide. For nine years until 1998 he was executive producer of National public Radio's Morning Edition.

"We have never really educated journalists in this country," says Ferrante. "We are still having problems with journalists going the final three steps . . . I have had a constant battle the whole time with getting enough editors, not reporters . . . through very major organizations."

Radio isn't dead, says Ferrante. And Boeri said it will keep going as long as it has a relatively captive audience among automobile commuters.

Boeri: Worries that TV journalists are no longer from newspaper and wire-service backgrounds. Now, he says: "They people coming into television today want to be on camera because they want to be on camera."

Did FBI squelch coverage in Boston?

"In my last year, I was told I couldn't cover the FBI anymore," said Boeri. "The FBI had put to much pressure on management . . . the problem today is the people we are working for . . . NPR today is not what it was 10 year ago, I think it has been watered down . . . the problem is with management."

A fellow panelist said Boeri should have covered the fact he was being "censored" by management. "I have to disagree with you," replies Borgesson. "That's a story, when it happens, it's a story." She continues: "The censorship within the networks is awesome. There's a line, I crossed it, and there boom went my career in network journalism."

Ferrante cautioned against become a room full of people who are blaming "them." He said for years he has had people in his newsroom who were trained in newspapers. He said reporters should by the time they get to the studio to broadcast, they still should have 10 more calls to make on their story.

In a question, David Clay Johnston: So long as Americans will spend their time listening to superficial news, there will be a problem.

Borjesson talked about "The Jersey Girls," a group of World Trade Center bombing victims' families who have "done enough research to come up with the right questions, and they have tried to hold peoples' feet to the fire." She says there appears a lack of interest or in-depth reporting on the Sept. 11, 2001 event. "I am completely floored about it and weirded out about it." Borjesson send a DVD with a documentary report on the Jersey Girls to participants in the Mass. Law conference.

Q-and-A: Compelling documentary about 9/11

"I thought your piece was a very compelling piece of documentary journalism," observed Robert Giles, curation of the Nieman Foundation.

Borjesson says the problem is that big stories like 9/11 are not put together in a whole, cohesive picture.

The question of context

Borjesson talked about the need to supply readers with the backstory on major events such as 9/11.

In a Q-and-A comment, Bill Densmore (author of this post) observed that this is a matter of providing context -- that the web may be better than that for newspapers and he noted that Matt Thompson, a fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, is working on a idea called, "Wikipediaeing the News," which will provide context.

Boeri reflected on his reading of a serialized biography of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who suffers from brain cancer. The biography prepared by a seven-reporter Boston Globe team, has been running in the print paper, but is also archived at The Globe's website. He said the extensive links to background source material makes the experience richer online.