FIXING TELEVISION NEWS.

• Author: Papper, Bob

Improvement will come only if viewers discourage the lowest-common-denominator approach too many stations take to boost ratings.

WHAT IS WRONG with television news is mostly a perversion of what is right with the medium. In an unbelievably competitive environment, television too often finds itself unable to settle merely for what it does exceptionally well. If this is the land of excess, then TV clearly defines who we are.

Television is the greatest mass medium of our time--arguably the only remaining one. As others specialize to survive, television invites everyone in--or at least everyone from the advertiser-desired ages of 18 to 54. In a mass medium, those with the biggest mass win.

"What's wrong with TV news? A simple one-word answer would be Nielsen," says Ramon Escobar, news director at WTVJ-TV in Miami.

Ratings are the god before which all TV bows. Can stations or networks win by taking the high road? Sure they can, but it is harder, calling for a long-term commitment and requiring better, smarter, and usually more expensive people. Moreover, it takes longer. Alternatively, there's the Jerry Springer low road to a mass audience, including sensational, screaming news coverage and sleazy special sweeps series. This may be the dictionary definition of lowest common denominator, but don't kid yourself, there are lots of ones and zeroes generated.

"Yeah, there's a lot of junk out there," concedes Marci Burdick, news director at KYTV-TV in Springfield, Mo., and a former chair of the Radio Television News Directors Association. "Sometimes I flip on television in motel rooms, and I just laugh at what I see." Nevertheless, Burdick maintains that television news, in general, is a lot better than people give it credit for. "I think there's more excellent journalism being done than lousy journalism. Unfortunately, the consumers never hear about it from us, and that's one of the greatest ironies."

It can be tough for a news director and news department to take the high road. Some of the competition can be brutal. "We did a story on kids and values; we did a story on racism and race relations," notes Escobar. "While we're doing that, we've got other stations in town, they're doing bathroom sex. The last [ratings] book, we had sort of a bathroom motif going on. Another station did, can you imagine, that public restrooms are dirty? What kind of a story is that? Another station did bathrooms of the future."

"It's troubling," reflects Tamara Lehman, news director at KREM-TV in Spokane, Wash. "It is frightening to be looking at rating points and see when some stations do unethical things for ratings." Among the "unethical things" she has in mind are news contests, station-sponsored giveaways to "lucky" viewers who watch the news. Defending this demeaning practice, station managers point to newspapers that do the same thing--proof that the juvenile response that "Johnny did it, too" is alive and well in television today.

The pressure for ratings is everywhere, and even stations that try to do news well are not immune. "Now when we talk about news series, we're not just talking about what makes a good story, we're talking about making sure that it appeals to 25 to 54, to our target audience," explains Lehman. She believes her station still puts responsible journalism first, but she finds the potential conflict "a little bit troubling."

So are some of the lessons from real life and real ratings. In the spring of 1998, all the stations in Indianapolis went to live coverage as police searched for a bank robber. The man climbed a tree and, as the police closed in, shot and killed himself. Once WTHR-TV determined that the man was dead, it continued to cover the story, but without live shots of police getting the dead man down from the tree. News...