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shakran · 07-22-2008, 06:17 PM

Soooo. You want an insider perspective eh? Fasten your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen

(shit. . .with an intro like that I've gotta make this good

)

I started my career in a tiny little station built from an old radio church (that looked like an old fallout shelter, of all things) way back in the days of steam powered television. Lugging cameras that, by the end of the day especially, seemed to weigh more than me. Shooting upwards of 5 stories per day, and having them all ready for the 5pm news.

Beginning photogs and reporters used to start their careers in tiny little markets and I was no different. We probably had 80,000 viewers all told. Often it felt more like 5. We'd charge around in our little news vehicles with the station logos on the door going to this "kids make macaroni pictures" event or that "hey it's spring and therefore the farmers are planting corn" story. We knew it was mostly bullshit, but we also knew that we were just perfecting the craft until we were good enough to move on to a station located in a market with real news. Even then, some things worried Rookie Shakran. Why do I keep getting sent out to this same car dealership every time there's a hailstorm to do a story on how many of their cars got dinged and oh by the way they're for sale real cheap? Why do I always interview this same guy at the farmers market selling sweet corn? And then I started noticing - - the dealership and the farmers market guy both bought advertising with us. Hmmm.
Well, OK, it's a small market, these people are dipshits, they dont' know what they're doing, it'll be better when I find my next job. So I did.

This was a lot more fun! All the gear worked, we had a satellite truck and even a helicopter to play with, and shit actually HAPPENED here. Murder, political corruption, the controversy over gay pride parades (Yes, I'm that old. Shaddup) The whole nine yards. And we had 3, count 'em 3 live trucks in addition to our satellite truck. Four live shots a night, and by god we used 'em! We went live from every damned thing. Someone calls with a story idea, the assignment editor's first question in the morning meeting was, "Can we get a live signal out of there?" Not "How can we best tell this story so that the viewers find out what they need to know - " Oh no, that's not important at all. What's important is how many times we can tell the viewers that we're LIVE, because supposedly viewers think that matters (they don't, but management never gets that).

Throughout my career i've watched news programs become more and more shrill in their "look at me!" tricks (including several years ago some idiot reporter getting naked for some nude group photograph an artist was taking. The station promoted the holy hell out of that one - needless to say the reporter was young and cute.)

Fast forward to a few years ago, a former intern of mine called me up. He'd gotten a job at my first station, which I thought was cool despite the fact that I didn't know anyone there anymore. But it was still in the fallout shelter and so it was kinda neat. I asked him how he liked it and he said it really sucks. Asked him if the macaroni decorating parties were getting to him and he said no, nothing like that. It was ethanol.

Ethanol?

Turns out he'd glommed upon the same research that I've posted here in various places. I won't go into the dirty details here but suffice to say ethanol is crap, and it's one of the largest scams ever foisted on the American public.

He had the info. He wanted to put it in a story on an ethanol plant that was being built as balance. They told him he couldn't, because it might make the corn farmers around him angry.

He left the business, as have scores of talanted reporters and photographers because the business simply isn't what it should be. We are willling to accept crap pay (starting salary for a photographer today is between $17,000 and $19,000) if we are allowed to tell stories that make a difference, but we aren't, and so we are gradually, one by one, getting the hell outa dodge.

This of course has an even more detrimental effect on the news business because the old pros and the promising newbies leave instead of bringing their considerable talents to journalism.

And this is showing in the reporting.

I've another friend that works in Milwaukee. About. . Oh, 7 months or so ago a cop in Crandon, WI went crazy and opened fire at a slumber party. He killed 6 kids, including his ex girlfriend. Big news. Everyone went. Stations from hundreds of miles around descended upon the town. Later that day, they finally found the cop north of town. there was a standoff. Shots were fired, and the murderer lay dead with three gunshot wounds to the head and one to the arm. In their press conference, the police and the Wisconsin attorney general said "We shot him in the arm - he then shot himself in the head three times."

In a stunning display of journalistic awfulness, not ONE reporter from any of the dozens of radio and tv stations and newspapers asked the obvious question. Namely, "How the hell do you shoot yourself in the head three times?" No one even thought to ask it. It simply did not cross their minds because the number of trained, competent journalists in this country is dwindling nearly every day, and unfortunately for the markets represented in this story, there were none left.

So, that, folks, is the state of the news business. It is a business. It is as has already been mentioned, here to sell advertisements. It's a lot easier to get people to watch if you have mildly blurred out video of Britney Spears without panties or Paris Hilton getting arrested, than it is if you have a serious discussion on the issues that effect us all every day.

Is all lost? No. PBS still has some excellent journalism, including Frontline and anything that Bill Moyers touches. NPR still digs for the stories instead of blindly trusting what the government or the corporation's PR flack tells them. but the audience for those programs is small. It's much more fun to watch Survivor than it is to watch a depressing story about the economy that forces you to think about the world around you, and so more people tune in to CBS to catch the reality shows.

The frightening part is that a true democracy cannot exist without governmental transparency. The government must be open to scrutiny by those whom it governs, otherwise corruption is possible and, in fact, inevitable given sufficient time. With a news media that doesn't care enough to report on what needs to be reported on, and to be that government watchdog, we are guaranteed to have a troubled democracy if in fact we have one at all.

Look at Clinton. When bin Laden attacked the WTC the first time, Clinton lobbed a couple of cruise missles in bin Laden's general direction and then yawned and said he'd had enough.

Did the media harp on him for that? Nope. Not at all. They were too busy worrying about a semen stain on a blue dress. that was sexy and risque and scandalous. . . and completely irrelevant to the administration of the country. I don't care if you have sex with horses as long as you bolster our economy and our security. Plenty of presidents have been bad eggs while only having sex with their wives. See Nixon.

There was a big fat juicy issue right there that actually mattered (as we now see) - - and instead of saying "hey America - the President isn't bothering to try and get the guy that committed an act of war against us," they said "hey America, the president's found a new use for a cigar."

It's sickening, it's disgusting, and it has even me, possibly the most die-hard journo you will ever meet, considering another career.

I can get paid four times as much and make no less difference than I'm making now.

07-22-2008, 06:17 PM	#14 (permalink)
shakran Tone.	Soooo. You want an insider perspective eh? Fasten your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen (shit. . .with an intro like that I've gotta make this good ) I started my career in a tiny little station built from an old radio church (that looked like an old fallout shelter, of all things) way back in the days of steam powered television. Lugging cameras that, by the end of the day especially, seemed to weigh more than me. Shooting upwards of 5 stories per day, and having them all ready for the 5pm news. Beginning photogs and reporters used to start their careers in tiny little markets and I was no different. We probably had 80,000 viewers all told. Often it felt more like 5. We'd charge around in our little news vehicles with the station logos on the door going to this "kids make macaroni pictures" event or that "hey it's spring and therefore the farmers are planting corn" story. We knew it was mostly bullshit, but we also knew that we were just perfecting the craft until we were good enough to move on to a station located in a market with real news. Even then, some things worried Rookie Shakran. Why do I keep getting sent out to this same car dealership every time there's a hailstorm to do a story on how many of their cars got dinged and oh by the way they're for sale real cheap? Why do I always interview this same guy at the farmers market selling sweet corn? And then I started noticing - - the dealership and the farmers market guy both bought advertising with us. Hmmm. Well, OK, it's a small market, these people are dipshits, they dont' know what they're doing, it'll be better when I find my next job. So I did. This was a lot more fun! All the gear worked, we had a satellite truck and even a helicopter to play with, and shit actually HAPPENED here. Murder, political corruption, the controversy over gay pride parades (Yes, I'm that old. Shaddup) The whole nine yards. And we had 3, count 'em 3 live trucks in addition to our satellite truck. Four live shots a night, and by god we used 'em! We went live from every damned thing. Someone calls with a story idea, the assignment editor's first question in the morning meeting was, "Can we get a live signal out of there?" Not "How can we best tell this story so that the viewers find out what they need to know - " Oh no, that's not important at all. What's important is how many times we can tell the viewers that we're LIVE, because supposedly viewers think that matters (they don't, but management never gets that). Throughout my career i've watched news programs become more and more shrill in their "look at me!" tricks (including several years ago some idiot reporter getting naked for some nude group photograph an artist was taking. The station promoted the holy hell out of that one - needless to say the reporter was young and cute.) Fast forward to a few years ago, a former intern of mine called me up. He'd gotten a job at my first station, which I thought was cool despite the fact that I didn't know anyone there anymore. But it was still in the fallout shelter and so it was kinda neat. I asked him how he liked it and he said it really sucks. Asked him if the macaroni decorating parties were getting to him and he said no, nothing like that. It was ethanol. Ethanol? Turns out he'd glommed upon the same research that I've posted here in various places. I won't go into the dirty details here but suffice to say ethanol is crap, and it's one of the largest scams ever foisted on the American public. He had the info. He wanted to put it in a story on an ethanol plant that was being built as balance. They told him he couldn't, because it might make the corn farmers around him angry. He left the business, as have scores of talanted reporters and photographers because the business simply isn't what it should be. We are willling to accept crap pay (starting salary for a photographer today is between $17,000 and $19,000) if we are allowed to tell stories that make a difference, but we aren't, and so we are gradually, one by one, getting the hell outa dodge. This of course has an even more detrimental effect on the news business because the old pros and the promising newbies leave instead of bringing their considerable talents to journalism. And this is showing in the reporting. I've another friend that works in Milwaukee. About. . Oh, 7 months or so ago a cop in Crandon, WI went crazy and opened fire at a slumber party. He killed 6 kids, including his ex girlfriend. Big news. Everyone went. Stations from hundreds of miles around descended upon the town. Later that day, they finally found the cop north of town. there was a standoff. Shots were fired, and the murderer lay dead with three gunshot wounds to the head and one to the arm. In their press conference, the police and the Wisconsin attorney general said "We shot him in the arm - he then shot himself in the head three times." In a stunning display of journalistic awfulness, not ONE reporter from any of the dozens of radio and tv stations and newspapers asked the obvious question. Namely, "How the hell do you shoot yourself in the head three times?" No one even thought to ask it. It simply did not cross their minds because the number of trained, competent journalists in this country is dwindling nearly every day, and unfortunately for the markets represented in this story, there were none left. So, that, folks, is the state of the news business. It is a business. It is as has already been mentioned, here to sell advertisements. It's a lot easier to get people to watch if you have mildly blurred out video of Britney Spears without panties or Paris Hilton getting arrested, than it is if you have a serious discussion on the issues that effect us all every day. Is all lost? No. PBS still has some excellent journalism, including Frontline and anything that Bill Moyers touches. NPR still digs for the stories instead of blindly trusting what the government or the corporation's PR flack tells them. but the audience for those programs is small. It's much more fun to watch Survivor than it is to watch a depressing story about the economy that forces you to think about the world around you, and so more people tune in to CBS to catch the reality shows. The frightening part is that a true democracy cannot exist without governmental transparency. The government must be open to scrutiny by those whom it governs, otherwise corruption is possible and, in fact, inevitable given sufficient time. With a news media that doesn't care enough to report on what needs to be reported on, and to be that government watchdog, we are guaranteed to have a troubled democracy if in fact we have one at all. Look at Clinton. When bin Laden attacked the WTC the first time, Clinton lobbed a couple of cruise missles in bin Laden's general direction and then yawned and said he'd had enough. Did the media harp on him for that? Nope. Not at all. They were too busy worrying about a semen stain on a blue dress. that was sexy and risque and scandalous. . . and completely irrelevant to the administration of the country. I don't care if you have sex with horses as long as you bolster our economy and our security. Plenty of presidents have been bad eggs while only having sex with their wives. See Nixon. There was a big fat juicy issue right there that actually mattered (as we now see) - - and instead of saying "hey America - the President isn't bothering to try and get the guy that committed an act of war against us," they said "hey America, the president's found a new use for a cigar." It's sickening, it's disgusting, and it has even me, possibly the most die-hard journo you will ever meet, considering another career. I can get paid four times as much and make no less difference than I'm making now.