Thursday, June 19, 2008

You Must Remember This .  .  .

by Paul Giacobbe

It has become, in newsrooms across the country, simply known as “the kiss:”  a generic reference to the question of whether stories of gay marriage should be illustrated with photos or videos of same sex couples kissing. The issue surfaced once again here when an NBC10 viewer objected to video of two men kissing as part of a recent morning news show story about California’s legalization of gay marriage.

“It has occurred to me before that every story about a gay marriage includes similar scenes,” wrote Bill Corcoran of Johnston.  “Yet I can’t remember the last time Channel 10 showed a heterosexual couple kissing.”

“Why,” wrote Mr. Corcoran, “would the news department insist on adding those clips to the story knowing that a good portion of their viewing audience is offended by such scenes?  Also, young children may be watching the program and I’m sure it has made many a parent uncomfortable.”

In 2004, when Oregon sanctioned same sex marriages, the Portland Oregonian was confronted with the issue of how to illustrate the stories about the more than 400 couples married in a single day.

Randy Cox, the newspaper’s senior editor for visuals, was quoted then in an article written by a staffer at the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education, as indicating that the kissing issue was the hardest of the decisions.

“Same sex kissing is a powerful image,” Cox said.  He noted that it evokes a reaction that further exacerbates an already heated debate.

Just this week, with the legalization of the marriages in California, Poynter weighed in again, noting that while some newsrooms have policies which discourage photos or videos of same sex kissing, others feel the kissing captures the climactic moment of a wedding.

Interestingly, Poynter says, some advocates of gay marriage dislike the kissing photos, saying that they have become a cliché that turns people away from the story, while others argue that when newsrooms refuse to show same sex kissing they “give in to dehumanizing forces.”

Given the extent of the debate over the use of images of same sex kissing, it’s clear that Mr. Corcoran, our Johnston viewer, is not alone in his discomfort.  It seems equally clear that absent a story about a specific couple being married, which might include video of that couple expressing their affection, there’s no compelling reason to show same sex kissing.

Television needs pictures, but the video used in the recent NBC10 story was generic footage, not specific to the story.  The video could have been couples at a ceremony, walking together or interacting in any of the many other ways that same sex marriages are frequently illustrated.  Insistence on using same sex kissing video when it’s not specifically relevant to a story can also be seen as advocating a particular position similar, for example, to using images of fetuses each time an abortion story is aired.

Viewers are NBC10’s customers.  There’s no rational reason to offend any of those customers by using video offensive to them when there are so many other images that are equally effective and much less polarizing.

NBC10 provides this space, but the opinions are mine alone.—Paul Giacobbe

Postscript—If the headline puzzles you, ask someone over 50.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Vanishing Ombudsman

by Paul Giacobbe

A pilot friend once told me that flying an airplane was hours and hours of boredom interspersed by moments of stark terror.  To a less dramatic extent, the ombudsman job is a little like that.

There are frequent complaints, comments and inquiries, but sometimes months can pass without a substantive challenge to the NBC10 “Viewers’ Voice” goal of insuring fairness, accuracy and balance.  Some of the complaints are interesting, but not the substance of great journalistic principles.  For example:

       
•   “Stop saying the bear is still loose.  The bear has always been loose.”
       
•   “There’s too much chit-chat and not enough news.”
       
• “How come there’s not more NASCAR news?”

The extent to which a story will arouse viewers is unpredictable.  There were, for example, never more calls or emails than the day when Chef Terranova, explaining the proper method of preparing baked stuffed lobster and oblivious as to the chain of events he was about to unleash, slit the still wriggling crustacean from stem to stern..

But the Viewers’ Voice program is at its best when it addresses a complaint where a viewer feels that a person or an issue has been unfairly or inaccurately portrayed in a news story.  That happened earlier this month when the governor of Rhode Island felt he had been unfairly treated by a story and a reporter.  Complaints also come from people not so high profile, and in those cases the viewer has as great an opportunity to have his grievance independently reviewed as did the governor.
That’s why it’s distressing to read that the ranks of ombudsmen in America are thinning, and quickly. Newspaper ombudsmen are more common than in the electronic media, and ombudsmen utilized by local broadcasters, such as NBC10, are truly rare.  Until a few months ago there were no others, but recently Gazette Communications in Iowa, which operates a local TV station as well as daily newspapers, has added an ombudsman.  There are about 35 U.S. newspaper ombudsmen, primarily in the big city newspapers, and significantly fewer than there were when the NBC10 Viewers’ Voice program started 11 years ago.

A very few ombudsmen, such as those at the New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio (and NBC10), are hired from outside the organization and have little actual newsroom contact.  But most newspaper ombudsmen are full time employees who generally are reporters or editors who have rotated into the job for a fixed period of time – and that’s where the problem arises.

A current article in the American Journalism Review notes the “reassignment” of ombudsmen at the Baltimore Sun and Minneapolis Star Tribune to editorial duties, and recently the ombudsmen jobs at the Orlando Sentinel and the Dallas-Fort Worth Times were either eliminated or left to remain vacant.  In all those cases the reason given was economic—in tight financial times the money may better be spent on a reporter.  The ombudsmen are seen as luxuries, to be utilized when times are good but abandoned at the first sign of fiscal distress.

Alex Tilitz, the author of the American Journalism Review article notes:  “No amount of outside scrutiny can build credibility as well as a news outlet’s own efforts to confront its mistakes.“

We are in a time of ever increasing distrust in the media and it’s shortsighted to conclude that the public interest will be less served with an ombudsman than with an extra story out of the state house, or off the police blotter.

NBC10 provides the space for this blog, but the opinions are mine alone – Paul Giacobbe