Yes, the future's so bright, they have to wear shades.
Of the three broadcast news heads, ABC's David Westin stood out most for his obstinate refusal to bend in the face of reality. Take the basic question of whether or not it still makes any sense (if in fact it ever did) to pay someone 10-15 million dollars annually to read the news reader " or be an "anchor, as they like to call it. Asked by Auletta what he would do if Katie Couric offered to give back some of her salary to be used to bolster news resources, McManus said he'd accept the offer in a heartbeat. But Westin shocked me by revealing for the first time that he had actually refused a similar offer made to him some years back by an unnamed former ABC News bigwig! (Ted Koppel, perhaps?) Pressed by yours truly during the Q and A that followed the discussion, Westin, who just hired a new multi-million dollar anchor last week, responded petulantly by saying the question itself was uninformed and betrayed a lack of understanding of how network news works at a basic level.
That may well be true " my own experience as a network news employee was admittedly limited and lowly, although as an independent producer I was being subsequently and variously involved everywhere from NBC (where our pilot series on innocent people in prison was bumped for "all Monica Lewinsky, all the time ) to ABC (where a piece commissioned by the nightly news was first commissioned, then killed, then aired after I threatened to sue for the money I had been promised initially) all the way to Fox (where the fax machine for a newsmagazine literally emptied into a waste basket.) But I digress!
Perhaps the words of President Barack Obama, delivered at the memorial for Walter Cronkite that preceded the Murrow anniversary by just a day, might hold more weight for Westin? Here's what this president had to say about network news:
We also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced -- a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers. It's a standard that's a little bit harder to find today. We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing. Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.
And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. ˜What happened today?' is replaced with ˜Who won today?' The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should "- and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?
Unlike the four on the stage at the Murrow anniversary, here is one president who actually gets it, and isn't afraid to tell it as it is " or as it could be. So when Obama tells us the future of journalism (at least -- if not network news itself) could be bright, it doesn't just come across as an annoying reminder of some treacly pop confection from twenty years ago. Instead, you actually believe not only in him, but in the truth and possibility of what he is saying:
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