Lynn Espinoza is a broadcast news veteran with more than a decade of media, presentation and executive coaching experience. She has developed personal coaching sessions for Fortune 100 C-level executives, corporate communicators of all kinds, doctors, lawyers and leaders in non-profit.
A Sad State of TV Affairs
Posted on June 5, 2008. Filed under: Latest News
I have to say I’m not surprised by this article , written by a journalism professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. The upshot is that TV News has become the pariah of the journalistic community. Not just for news consumers old enough to remember good TV news, but even for experienced reporters and young students who may still think they have a chance to save it. Here are some of the truths uncovered by the article’s author, Robert Niles:
Many journalists despise TV news. They hate watching it, they hate producing it, and, given the opportunity, they turn it off and ignore it. My journalism students this semester went off on this topic in class one day, raging about the rigid format, the simplistic reporting and cynicism that they found in TV news reports.
My students complained about the titillation - fear-mongering crime reports, salacious coverage of the entertainment industries, reporters and anchor people glammed up to look like models. And when TV reports covered more serious issues, including politics, they result as little more than propaganda - talking points served up from two sides, with no analysis testing the claims, beyond petty insults.
The broadcast majors among them expressed their revulsion at moving into an industry where “good television” meant insults, violence and conflict, rather than information, engagement and enlightenment.
Full disclosure - I left a 15 year career in television news because my job as an anchor and reporter no longer reflected my view of the world. There are still some great stories on TV, but they’re hard to find amidst the schlock.
I have clients who want to tell their stories on television. There are still creative ways to do it, and do it with integrity. It makes message development that much more important, because they need their story to be compelling enough to break through the clutter. That doesn’t mean we have to craft a “sexy” business story, but the story does have to have great video, and messages (soundbites) that make you go “hmmm…”
The challenge is to craft a story that makes even those cynical aspiring journalists say, “That’s a story I’d like to tell“. I gladly take this challenge. Selfishly, it means I can still do good TV - I’m just doing it from the other side.
3 Responses to “A Sad State of TV Affairs”
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Great article as always!!
Well said. I left the industry for many of the same reasons. Thanks for the great post.
Jeff - thank you for your post. Where did you work?