rogus@ohio.edu
I am blogging from the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) annual convention in Las Vegas. Each year news managers, along with educators like myself and broadcast journalism students (hoping to get jobs from those news managers) get together to talk about what's going on in our business.
Ethics is always front and center in our many discussions and panels on our quickly changing business. The RTNDA convention is held at the same time that the National Association of Broadcasters holds its NAB Show in Vegas. NAB is the major trade organization for broadcasting, representing primarily the owners and managers of broadcast and electronic media outlets. Holding the two conventions together lets the organizations merge some programming, and provides vendors with all the decision-makers in one place at one time.
At our pre-convention board meeting, RTNDA Board members had the pleasure of hearing from NAB President David Rehr. Rehr is a very dynamic and passionate advocate for the broadcast industry. He updated the board on the legislation and regulation that's pending in Washington D.C. that could have a major impact on our industry.
When asked by a board member what news departments could do to help get the word out about the potential impact of this upcoming legislation, Rehr responded that he wouldn't want news departments to do anything that would damage the firewall between newsrooms and the business side of stations. The resounding endorsement of one of our key ethical principles of independence from one of the major spokesmen for station management and ownership was music to my ears.
I was very lucky in my 20 years working for 8 different local television stations, most owned by large television companies, that I always enjoyed strong support from station management. Even when we pursued stories that might be damaging to advertisers, no one in the news department was told to stop or even tread carefully.
But I think the greater problem in newsrooms these days is not potential censorship, but the sales creep into news content. Again, I was very lucky, in that while the stations I worked for certainly went after sales opportunities to sponsor weather, sports, or even news segments such as health reports, it was clear in these agreements that a sponsorship bought absolutely NO influence on content.
To hear David Rehr endorse that continuing separation of the business of broadcast from our news obligation to our viewers and communities, was wonderful. At a time when our credibility is always in question, and upwards of 70% of news viewers surveyed by RTNDA believe the news is a little or a lot influenced by station management or owners and advertisers, this was much needed support of our independence.
Rehr easily could have jumped on the opportunity to suggest that the RTNDA Board encourage its membership to do stories on the pending legislation and ask viewers to email or call their congressional representatives. Newsrooms could be a powerful voice for the important agenda of the NAB. But he immediately pointed out the importance of broadcast journalism maintaining its integrity and not even presenting the appearance of content being influenced by station management or owners.
Sometimes I think we are too quick to dismiss our responsibility to report on some of these issues because we feel it's too much 'inside baseball' or we have too great a conflict of interest. Just because broadcasters are directly effected by a story, doesn't mean it doesn't also have a strong impact on our viewers too. As long as we approach the story with the same objectives of fairness, balance and accuracy, we can cover ourselves. But it's nice to know that we have a strong advocate in David Rehr to allow us to make those decisions independently, and produce stories that tell all sides of the story.
I look forward to Rehr's opening remarks Monday to kick off our two conventions. And I must say the man, whom I already had a great deal of respect for based on previous actions and interactions, has gone up again in my esteem.
Check out complete coverage of the RTNDA convention at rtnda.org, and you can follow our Twitter posts using #RTNDA.
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