Good News

So often in the news business we are the bearers of bad news. We bring reports of deaths, accidents, and war. We often highlight the worst of humanity, the rapes, the assaults, and the murders. We bring you the psychos, pederasts, and pedophiles. Yet sometimes the news can do something special, it can inspire, and create a moment that can stand alone as a sign of goodness in a world the media often portrays as bleak at best. Last week before the thanksgiving Holiday one such incident happened. 23-year-old Marine Corporal Bill Kilian has been in Iraq for the past three months. He hasn’t been able to speak to his family in all of that time. A satellite company was making him available to news stations to talk about spending a holiday overseas. We took this interview that could have easily turned into propaganda for the war machine and turned it into a reunion. We brought his father and grandmother into the studio and let them talk via satellite link up. When Kilian found out it was his father talking to him from half a world away his jaw literally dropped. See for you self here Marine Reunion. It was a moment that could only have been captured on television thanks to technology. So often we see the horrors that can be captured on television it was amazing to see one of those stories that break the trend.

Good Night, and Good Luck

In the movie “Good Night, and Good Luck” George Clooney writes and directs a film that perfectly captures CBS anchor Edward R. Murrow’s clashes with the leader of the communist witch hunt Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film is amazing and I recommend everyone should go see it. Since I am a newsman myself I felt especially touched. There is one line towards the end of the film where Murrow is defending his station airing the attacks on McCarthy. He says something along the lines of “a station is gauged by the strength of its news.”
This is something that seems to make so much sense in the 1950’s but not so much today. Look at the state of the network news organizations CBS in particular. I have spoken at length about ‘Rathergate’ and the other scandals that have put the reputation of CBS into question. Yet does anyone care? That is a question I am not sure I want answered. How do people define the stations they watch? Most people don’t get their news from networks anymore. If they want news they go to one of the 24 news networks. Gone are the voices that brought news to a generation. They are lost – their powerful performances lost to a generation. Even the anchor so many turned to just a few years ago during 9-11 Peter Jennings, has been lost to lung cancer. It seem appropriate since “Good Night, and Good Luck,” is shot in black white and smoke pours from every character wrapping the film in a haze that seems to keep it locked in the past and ended up taking one of the greatest of a generation.
How do we define the channels of today? We have gone from three to three hundred. When you think CBS do you think ‘Evening News’ ’60 Minutes’ or do you think ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ ‘CSI’ and ‘Survivor?’
I'll ask a simpler question, which is easier for you to name: three members of a nightly news team, (Andy Rooney doesn't count), or three members from a prime time broadcast? Nightly news may not be what it once was, but neither is the audience. I fear soon when it becomes unprofitable to keep a news team together, and when enough Americans finally have switched the dial, once and for all the source of news for millions of Americans will finally be silenced.