Hour 116

Nothing juicy in my 116 hour. The entire hour was a carryover from the previous hour. It involved discussion between a male with a British accent (I refer to him as Brit in my transcript since I don't know who he is) and some journalism students or interns. But the entire hour talked about how graphic events should be broken and shown to the viewers. Ennis Cosby murder photos, Mogadishu, Somalia, a suicide on air from a state government official, and it ended with them talking about the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. I thought it was pretty interesting. Some bias in there but I thought it was straightforward and made sense for the most part. Timestamps are throughout. I tried to include as much as possible. Sorry for the length but there was just so much talking.
0018T 070809 0950
My notes beginning at 2:59:58 in the 116th hour portion. The previous hour (115) ended with a male with British accent
discussing the importance of the murder of Ennis Cosby and the media portrayal as him being son of famous entertainer Bill Cosby with journalism students. He was focusing on how the images from the crime scene along the freeway were obtained (from a helicopter) and advances in image stabilization.
3:00:00
Same guy (I will call him Brit going forward) speaking to same journalism students. Talking about how you could see the blood from Ennis Cosby trickling down his face and the images being able to be sent to stations from the camera on the helicopter. These tech advances enabled CNN to "stick their foot in it". Asking if CNN should apologize for broadcasting the scene to the public. Male student says yes. Brit asks if it was relevant to the story. Female student says image was unnecessary and that combining the verbal report with the image sensationalized it and yes there should be an apology. Brit begins new story about a friend who was program manager at TCM (Turner Classic Movies) network and how he was contacted by Bill Cosby one day. Brit's friend didn't believe it at first and had to verify it. Turns out that Bill Cosby was calling because he loved TCM so much because of what they'd done to restore the MGM film library that he was volunteering to do commercials for TCM for $1.00/year. All they had to do was pay for his expenses. Bill Cosby thought it was important to culture that they existed. Commercials were done in the genre of the movies like film noire, Chicago gangster-style, Sam Spade, etc. Brit says now there's a business relationship between Turner (parent company of CNN) and Bill Cosby. Should we now apologize and should it make a difference? Male student asks if Brit is referring to apology to Bill Cosby or to the audience? Brit says it's a good question and asks what they think. Female student says to family. Male student says just to family and that there doesn't need to be a public on-air apology because family is more important. Another male student says a lot of parents might not want their children to see this image. Brit asks if a warning was played before the video and they said no. Female student says it's disturbing enough that viewers at home who didn't know him would be offended. Another female student says apologizing on air would make it even worse.
3:05:00
Brit asks if anybody has a problem with the business thing getting in the way of what they're showing. Male student says the two companies are related and TCM has no control over what CNN shows. Brit returns with one of their executives might be pretty upset at what they'd done. Brit asks what Jim should say. Male student says they should tell Jim they're sorry and call him to apologize. Female says it's not for nothing that John Travolta got extorted because of his son for the images of him when he was dead so they should definitely apologize. Brit says he has a major problem with TCM telling CNN what they should and shouldn't show and that their editorial integrity is such that he wouldn't want them apologizing because of the business connection. He asks who disagrees with that. Seems like many do. Brit says there are several issues: did they make the right call showing it (most said no) and now how should they handle the clean-up. Is it the business angering Bill Cosby or is it the relationship angering the viewers or is it a combination of both? Male student says back then with not having Twitter or Facebook that it's up to the editor to make the call on what's shown. Brit says it was a VO and not a package and jokes with class if they've heard of videotape. Male student asks if only CNN had this tape or did others. Brit says the tape came from an affiliate. Male student says it doesn't make it right to show it just because others were showing it and just because others are doing something wrong doesn't mean you should.
3:10:00
Brit says it's time to roll on. Raise your hands, should CNN apologize or not? Mixed results. Who should they apologize to: the family or the viewers? Mixed results. Now playing audio of a videotaped apology from CNN plays. Female anchor/report apologizing for showing a close-up of the body of Ennis CROSBY. Back to Brit in the room asking what is the first rule of corrections? Male student replies getting his name right. Brit says don't ever do a correction of a correction and to never screw up a correction. Brit says they didn't make the apology based on business connections but did it because they thought it was right thing to do. Male student says after seeing that the way she worded the apology made the apology seem insincere because she referred to the family at the end.
3:12:00
Brit says he's going to move on now and asks the room, "Who knows a little bit about the Balkans War and the siege of Sarajevo." Asks if anybody knows if the Olympics were held in Sarajevo. (It didn't seem like anybody knew anything about this as there were no verbal responses.) Within five years a bloody civil war was unfolding in what was former Yugoslavia with the Serbians surrounding Sarajevo and turning it into a killing zone. It was a brutal thing and primarily Muslim Bosnian community in Sarajevo was targeted relentlessly by the Serbian forces who were so-called Christian. The result was unprecedented slaughter. There were sniper rallies. Sarajevo was in a bowl. It was a beautiful city. The Serbian forces got on the hills surrounding the city and fired into the city. On this particular day, CNN had a camera crew along with other organizations not far from the Sarajevo market. Brit explains how in European markets the farmers and merchants bring in the food and products and you buy everything from the markets. So the market is in full sway when this happens. Brit says these images are very hard to look at. Video begins playing. I can hear audio of people crying and speaking a foreign language. Car horns are honking. Video ends. Brit says the Serbs had fired three artillery shells into the market in quick succession and clearly targeting the market. These are the first images that fed into Atlanta. You're the decision makers in the newsroom. I'm going to put you in the hot seat. Female is asked what she is (a recruiter) and he asks what she would do. She said she would show the images. She wouldn't make the call herself but she would vote to show them. Brit asks another female what she would do. She said there would be certain ones they could show. Brit asks about the image of the headless corpse. Groans from the students. Brit asks about loading the bodies on to the truck. More groans. Brit asks why wouldn't they show them? Male says they don't want to alienate the viewers. Female (very close to the recorder) says what if you're watching it and this is the first time you see and It's somebody you know. Another female asks if they could do a warning first and if they could do that for some. Brit thought it was interesting solution. Another female says the story here is that there is a massacre. Brit asks what's absent here. What did the troops commit? Replies of terrorism. Brit says no, it's state-sponsored. He says it's a war crime. This is where someone in uniform violated every one of the Geneva conventions, aimed those weapons at known civilians in a market doing peaceful things, and blew them to smithereens. Now does it change your view on what we might need to show? In the case of Bill Cosby's son it was about the pain of the father in the death of his son. It was Bill Cosby in pain. In this circumstance, it was all about how these people died. Male student asks about objectivity. Brit says how can you be objective about a war crime? Same male student asks if they're condemning a war crime in showing this. Brit says of course they are because it's a war crime. This same male student prefers a wide shot rather than showing specifics.
3:20:00
Brit asks if we're journalists what is our role – our fundamental role? Students reply saying to tell a story. Brit says and to aide the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – to a degree. Is that not part of the traditional role of a journalist? So here we have someone who committed a war crime. Do we sugarcoat it by helping out some of those images or do we show it all or do we risk alienating our viewers by showing it all? Where do we draw the line? Female replies should show warning because what's happen is important. Male says could be a warning saying it's graphic but also blur out the graphic parts. Another male says until there was 24-hour news this wasn't necessary so why is it necessary now that we warn viewers and sugar coat it ourselves? (Recorder is moving around a lot right now and Brit is further away and these questions/answers are hard to make out but it's more along of the same lines of how to determine what to show to viewers.)


0018T 070809 0950 Continued 116th hour
3:22:00 Brit asks isn't there a power of video that transcends (not legible). He's talking about hearing voices and emotions. Says television is a visceral (not legible). If we had truly written the words Michael Jackson's 11-yr-old daughter had said she missed her father than showing the video of her getting on stage with her lip trembling and her talking about her daddy would it have been as powerful. Brit says you can't capture it like television can. There's a role for showing some of this stuff. Female agrees that it does give you a visceral reaction but that CNN as far as their credibility should say this is on basic tiers now and then flip it to that because how can you explain that to a child. Brit says the way to explain it is the airport network. Do people really want to come off the plane and see that and they can't turn the channel?
3:25:00 Male student says from what he sees the difference between film and television as film telling a story with emotion and television telling a story. Brit says there is emotion in television too. Male agrees with Brit that there can be an emotional component in television. Brit asks if they want to see how CNN handled this material. When the material came in and the supervisor saw this stuff, the tape supervisor was 'Oh my God' and she called one of the senior producers who then went and got an executive producer who went and got a vice president who got another vice president and the senior vice president. Pretty soon the edit bay was full of dark suits and red ties wondering what the hell to do with this thing. Someone said they need to get Tom Johnson in there so he came roaring down. He was then the president for nine years. He walked in to the edit bay, looked at the material, said this is a war crime, we have to show every frame and we can't ignore this. So we did it with a viewer warning. The correspondent was a guy by the name of Walt Rogers. He'd been with us up through last Iraq war. He was at that time Sarajevo bureau chief. He did an introduction to the video saying it was graphic. There was a warning from the anchor before tossing it to Walt and he described what happened. . We played out the entire thing. We weren't the only one that did that. I was at CBS News at the time and we played out much of these same pictures in our report from our correspondent. They were hard to look at but the result was that journalists around the world showed what was going on there and the UN had no option but to intervene. The result was S4. Later it was K4 for Kosovo. That intervention would not have taken place I don't think if journalists hadn't shown what was going on there. I'm not saying that decision by Tom Johnson turned the tide but I think it was certainly (not legible). Where journalism points out a problem and points out solutions. Sometimes that means showing pictures at home where the kids hearing there's a viewer warning turn up the sound instead of changing the channel. Sometimes as a responsible journalist we have to find that balance. Brit asks if anybody disagrees with that call. Male student says he still thinks they should always apologize to the family. Brit says It's hard because you have a business relationship with Bill Cosby but you have no relationship with people on the other side of the Atlantic in a foreign country. He thinks it's a legitimate criticism because it's easier to show because they're 'not us'. It's something you have to find and work through. He thinks there are good reasons in this case and he thinks Tom made the right call fundamentally. Female student says they didn't need to apologize but say that they feel this should be aired (not legible). Brit says you can bet your bippy that nobody in Iran was showing the pictures of the authorities beating of the authorities of head count Nehra (this last part was hard to read and search engines couldn't help me figure out who/what he was referring to). Female says exactly and (hard to hear).
3:30:00
Brit asks who's seen Black Hawk Down. Was it good and exciting? What you're about to see is a 20-second snippet of CNN's reporting from the day it happened in Mogadishu. This is Brent Sadler's reporting from that particular day. There is a sequence that's hard to look at. Video starts - The hunters have become the hunted. US helicopters falling prey to Somalian government. Bloodthirsty crowds dragging crowds in Mogadishu and a helicopter pilot forced to make humiliating admissions – video ends. Brit says that was horrifying. He asks the students the image that they'll take away from it when they think about Mogadishu. Several reply it was dragging the body. Brit questions how long that particular second was. Guesses vary from 1 to 3 seconds. Brit says it was 15 frames, ½ second. He said it's burned in their retina. It's an iconic image and you'll remember Mogadishu because of that image. Brit says CNN got bombarded with complaint calls when they showed that image. CBS News where I was ran more of that sequence but few called and complained. Why did CNN get so many complaint calls and CBS News get none? Male student answering but it's not legible. Female student answering and not legible. Brit says it's a great observation. Person very close to the recorder speaks up and says she can't hear what she was saying. Female student says different people with different expectations. Person very close to the recorder responds with isn't CBS News a public channel everybody gets and CNN is cable that you have to pay to get? Brit asks when the CBS News is on and then when is CNN on? So when will they have seen this? Students answer all day. Brit imitating Larry King introducing the segment on Larry King Live and asks if they get the drift.
3:35:00
Brit asks what is the viewer going to do after seeing that 19 times? They're going to pick up their remote and throw it at the TV and then call the CNN switchboard. CBS News, the viewers are going to work all day, come home and sit down to the news with their turkey and dressing TV dinner, and then Brit proceeds to mock conversation between a husband and wife. He says they can handle this one time or maybe twice but 19 times and they go berserk. So that's why. Brit says so when he writes what he says in their guidance file and then asks them if they've seen the Triad(?) website, to use only in packages or only once an hour is to limit the overkill of repetitiveness of images like that that are hard to look at. On the Mehta(?) death, we limited the video usage to initially within packages and then eased it to once an hour but asked them not to use the most difficult material to look at outside the packages. So we allow the viewers to see what's going on, you see Mehta/Nehta falling perhaps or from a distance with people around, you instantly get the recall on the image without seeing it again. Asks for any questions. There are none. He checks the time. It's 1:30. He asks if they're bored yet and they say no so he says he'll keep going.
3:37 Brit asks if anybody knows anything about Budd Dwyer? Scattered responses. Brit says he was the state treasurer of Pennsylvania in 1987. A bit of a scoundrel. He's accused of embezzling a bunch of money from the state. He's pursued relentlessly by the media because the media do things like that. He didn't like the media much. He is tried, he is convicted, he refuses to resign from office. The day before he's to begin serving a sentence, he calls a news conference in the middle of the day. Everybody thought it was going to be his resignation. Remember this is 1987. There was big equipment and stuff called videotape. There wasn't enough cable to go all the way to his office to do a live shot. So the camera crews from the 3 local stations in Harrisburg and one from Philadelphia were all in there but didn't have satellite trucks and only microwave trucks which were parked downstairs. So after the news conference was over they would have to run downstairs with the tape. But for purposes of discussion today, I want you to imagine that this is live. This is hitting your noon newscast on your local station. How would you handle what's about to unfold? What you're about to see is edited because it's too gross to look at but you'll quickly figure out what happens. What I need you to do is figure out how to respond to this as the producer in the control room when you need to put this on the air.


0018T 070809 0950 Continued 116th hour
3:40 Video footage in the room begins playing. Confusion from people. Don't shoot! Woman shrieking. Someone says settle down. Nervous laughter from students in the room can be heard. Video ends. Brit asks them what happened and if they could figure out what happened. Male student says he (Budd Dwyer) committed suicide. Brit says yes. Brit calls on Christina. She's slow with her answer and he gets on her a little bit. She said she would air the video. Laughter from students. Brit asks another female student named Sumi? She said she would cut away when the gun comes out. Brit says are you really going to do that? Don't you have ratings to worry about? Sumi says there is the crowd to worry about and the anchors. Brit says so Sumi is being a chicken and bailing on the news conference when the gun comes out. Sumi says she could play it later in the newscast but Brit counters that the newscast is only 30 minutes long. You only have one life to live. Brit says this is the noon newscast when somebody brings up what about the children. Brit then asks them what the weather was like on that day and says it was the biggest snowfall in Pennsylvania in 10 years. Where are all the kids? They're at home and just built their snow fort, no cartoon network, and they're even willing to watch the news. Brit asks the fastest time slice up to the time now and says it's the TV remote and the cutting away from this news conference that people are switching to get over to ChristinaTV (the student). Brit asks if they should show it. Male student says because everybody wants to see it. Female student says no not everybody wants to see it. People talking about what if people talked him down (from committing suicide). Brit counters with but you don't know what he would shoot the cameraman.
3:45:00
Brit asks if he could simulate the conversation between the producer in the control room to the general manager. Ring ring, hi Sumi (one of the student's names), this is Richard Griffiths the GM. What are you thinking Sumi? You just cut out of the biggest news of the year! She answers that (not legible but along the lines of she didn't think it was right to show). GM says I'm going to send you home for the day without pay because you just cut away from this. Bye! Laughter from students. A female student asks if there's a delay and Brit says no. Male student asking/saying something that's not legible. Female student asks if you could cut away to commercial and Brit says that's bailing out. Another female student says they would have showed it because if they were a viewer they'd want to know what happened next. Male student says he might fade the video to black and leave the audio going. Another says if you do that then the viewer wouldn't know who was shot (only hearing it). Another female student saying something not legible about someone running from the room and it comes around to her basically not caring about whether her cameraman was shot or not because it's his job. Brit says there's one more for the day. Another student says something about not wanting to see anymore for the day. Brit says they can go on YouTube when she goes back to her room. Another male says any cameraman worth his weight will have the camera rolling because it's a code of ours. Brit says let me tell you what happened in Harrisburg. There were 3 stations. They ran down to their trucks. First station slammed it in the machine and hit play and it went right out on the air and showed the suicide and then they re-wrapped the tape (played it again from the truck and again and again from the station itself).
3:50:00 Station number two ChristinaTV (from a student's name) played it out once live and then went back and edited it for subsequent air. Station number two (SumiTV) was like I don't know if you want to put this on the air but I have this tape and you're going to want to look at it. Sumi's equivalent made the call and in fact was suspended by the GM for making the wrong call. It wasn't too long before the complaints started rolling in and the station that played the tape over and over again nearly lost its license to operate which was worth millions for failing to operate in the public interest. The FCC went after them for massive fines, threatened to pull their license, had to do all types of penance. And you can imagine what happened to the producer that got suspended. How much would you like to come back to work? So you know what, now you have a sense of the decision-making process here. One of the things I want you to take away, hate to put you on the spot Christina, but the fact is when you're in a control room, when you in a position of management authority, when you're in control of things over the air, you have to have a plan of escape. This is a bit like combat. You're a fireman going in to rescue someone you have to think how you're going to get out. You as a producer always need to have an escape route so you can be thinking an alternative to what you're facing. It might be going to color bars or black or going to commercial to give you three minutes to think about this. And you might lose some viewers switching over but the fact is doing the right thing is sometimes more important for your ability to stay in business than getting the quick ratings. Does that make sense? And yes, the kids were all at home because Cartoon Network hadn't been started in 1987. They were watching the news. The outrage was huge in Pennsylvania. You can read all about it.
3:53:00 Any other questions related to this? A male student asks how tuned people are in to ratings? Brit says that people tune in to CNN to watch the Michael Jackson stuff because they know that they're saying he is in fact dead and that they're not reporting him as dead 6 minutes before which is what TMZ did I don't know if you guys know that but fun fact. He was actually not dead until 6 minutes after they said. Male student asks something but it's not legible. Brit replies the moment of death is a very intimate thing. Mogadishu, Sarajevo, Ennis Cosby, it's all after the fact. We're seeing a body covered or uncovered. But that moment of death is a very intimate thing. That's one of the reasons why I chose not to show it. A male student responded with he chose not to? Brit says yes but it's invasive because of my space and not his. He was making a deliberate decision to invade my personal space by doing that (referring to Dwyer). Brit says here's a fun fact related to Dwyer. What if he'd gone to his garage, cranked up his car, put a vacuum cleaner hose from his car to the garage, and committed suicide that way, would we have covered it? Some student said yes. Brit says they might. A female student says they were covering the trial so it would have been included as part of the news on the trial. Brit says they might not have covered the trial at CNN though because of how much money might have been involved. Some student jokes about the money going to Sarah Palin. Brit says OK, let's move on.
3:56:00 Brit asks if anybody knew about Space Shuttle Challenger or if they were in school or in class watching Challenger. Brit says Christa McAuliffe. Video starts playing. NASA footage. Shuttle launching. Clear from tower. Climbing. Silence. More silence. Brit asks the students if everybody understands what happened there. How many people know anything about Christa McAuliffe. Male student says she was a high school teacher. Brit said yes and that she was to be the first teacher in space. She had the teaching to do elementary school and junior high and high schools over at NASA TV. She'd attracted a following being the first teacher in space. Then the shuttle failed on the pad with the rocket booster sending a jet (not legible) and the result was everybody on board died. Now, that's showing the moment of death is it not? We just saw 7 people die there. Is it appropriate that CNN show that on the air? Students saying no and yes. Female saying yes because it wasn't very detailed. Brit says it was violent but not graphic right? Male student says no because he's not comfortable with seeing the debris falling down because it gives time to reflect they did die. He'd rather see the explosion and cut away. Another male student said it was like with Dale Earnhardt and that you didn't really know it was going to happen and when it happened you weren't for sure that it really happened and that the people in the studio were probably in shock themselves. Brit says CNN was the only network carrying the Challenger launch. I was at CBS News in Los Angeles and covering landings at (not legible) and we hadn't even bothered to carry the liftoff. The rest of my hour (3:59:00 or approximately 1 minute) is not really legible. Something about sitting in Atlanta and having to scramble (I'm assuming to get news or footage about Challenger out for airing).