Between the cup and the lip . . .

by Paul Giacobbe

A telephone call from an upset viewer a few weeks ago reminded me that there remains a disconnect of sorts between the people in the newsroom who go out and gather the news, and write their stories, and the people who write both the copy which promotes the stories and introduces the stories.

Mary Small was upset about a story relating to the discovery of the body of a teenage girl who had died in a field at an abandoned airport after wandering away from her friends at what was apparently a drinking party.  She was upset, Ms. Small said, not only by the story but because the story’s promotion, or “tease,” did not accurately represent the story.

Preprogram teases and anchor introductions to stories are frequently not written by the reporter who did the story.  As a result, occasionally the introductory material is in conflict with the actual story.

With Ms. Small’s complaint still in mind, I listened earlier this week to an anchor indicating at the start of the newscast that a lien had been placed on the home of an Attleboro woman as the result of a one cent tax bill.  While the idea of a person being sent a bill for one cent in these days of computer generated billing wasn’t all that surprising, the suggestion that a municipality had actually filed a lien for one cent did attract my interest.

But the story itself said nothing about a lien.  Only that the woman had been sent a threatening letter about her overdue tax bill.  The newsroom later confirmed that there was no information that a lien had been filed. (Unpaid taxes, whether overdue or not, are an automatic “lien” on real estate in most states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  The story tease suggested that some action beyond this automatic lien had been taken as a result of the overdue one cent.)

Things move quickly in a newsroom heading towards a deadline.  But there should be some way to insure that viewer confidence in the news product is not eroded by misleading or inaccurate teases or introductions.
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NBC10 provides the space for this blog, but the opinions are mine alone – Paul Giacobbe