The First Amendment; Pamela Kahn

The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s produced by WGBH radio Boston cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Reuben. We discussed a great many basic First Amendment problems on the series but one that we have never discussed is perhaps as important as any of them. How does the new get on our television screens every night. What constitutes news who are the people that put it on. Most of the American people every evening 6 o'clock or 11 o'clock and almost every city in the United States watch the feature news that is presented as one of the cornerstones of the station management and we know very little about that process. So I'm delighted to have as my guest today Pamela Caron who is the director of the 11 o'clock news for the Westinghouse station in Boston which as you know is one of the top

10 markets in the United States. It is also a an affiliate of NBC she's the producer of the 11 o'clock news. And they. One of the key people that has made that particular program a leader in the audience garnered of any audience in the in the area of the metropolitan area their time before she came to Boston. She worked as a reporter for the all news NBC radio station in Phoenix then went on to Tucson Arizona as an investigative reporter and producer of the NBC station television station there and before she came to Boston Pamela Kahn was in Phoenix as the producer of the 10:00 p.m. news of the NBC affiliate television station there. So Pamela come on since you are the key person who puts the news on that we see that determines our views on a great many subjects. Give us a little rundown if you will of just what happens when you arrive at the station. I know that because you do the 11

o'clock news you your shift begins about 4:00 o'clock. What happens between 4:00 and 11 in in terms of the specific things that you do. Thank you Dr. IBN. The job of an 11 o'clock producer is different I suppose than than the other producers because your shift as you say is really basically three to midnight or four to midnight. And what you do is you come in and you go to the assignment desk and you find out what stories have been covered. You discuss you perhaps have called the assignment desk earlier in the day and have said here's a story I would like us to follow up on tonight we'll discuss what potential stories there are for the night what sort of breaking news there is and will decide what stories you want your night reporter or reporters to cover that night and you'll always have some stories covered whatever they are that night and then you go over to the wires and look at what's been happening and talk with the other producers and find out what sort of stories they think are stronger or weaker What stories need to be advanced What stories need to be avoided that they're using perhaps just to fill out their

newscasts. Unlike the other earlier newscast I think on the 11:00 because you have so many different sources going into it you have national international and local news. It's really at a premium what stories you can put in whereas other newscasts if if you work those you find you're putting in stories that really are hard news and are very very soft feature. If you had any other story you might put some other story in in its place. After I go over the wires though I will go and I will watch the first of the network feeds this feed does not. Come over there unless the producer or producer of sports or weather decides they want that show that piece on their on their report on their cast and you will you know judge which of those you want the other producers can use some of that feed too. Then you'll come back and you'll watch it. I watch the 6 o'clock hour report and basically see how what we have what the other stations have to see if we've been beaten on anything that's of course in any commercial station very important your news director and management

hates to have you beaten on anything and I will really only watch the first half hour of that because the nightly news comes down all the networks feed an early feed usually that is not seen but sometimes is taken by food you going to let you know probably around so you can get right to feed is various affiliate stations get a certain broadcast or telecast into the station that perhaps isn't broadcast nightly news has two broadcasts and in the Boston area we take the second what we call feed or broadcast of it. The network prefers that because if there is any mistake that's made they can fix it in the second broadcast and also because if there's any you know late breaking news they prefer you know they can put that in the second broadcast and you will watch the first broadcast and I will decide from that. What of Nightly News What of the afternoon feed or or broadcast. I want and from the local stories I will combine those things what with whatever my

night reports are and come up with a list an outline of what my show will look like and I will assign various people to write certain things tell them how long I want it to be tell them if I need what we call is a tag out meaning things like having it come back to the anchorman on camera before we pitch it to the other Anchorman and throughout the evening I'll be checking the wires we have someone on the assignment desk. Some stations don't so we're lucky we have someone on this I would ask that to listen to the radios to see if there's anything happening such as unfortunate crimes or fires or something like that that we should be telling the public about this is what has happened they saw smoke and this is what it was. We then hopefully have a newscast together by 10:15 10:20 that it is the scripts are torn apart. They're given to the anchorman to go over the anchorman in Boston in our station. I work very hard and some stations smaller markets larger markets don't do very much.

We're very lucky to have a woman that can write. It destroys the image of just a pretty face they are both very talented journalists good writers solid newsman. So you are and you prepare all of this now when you send out your reporters on assignment how many reporters do you have that you can send out as you're preparing for the night's work. I have one every night for sure. If there's any other stories I do camera crew another would know I have one reporter and two camera crews too because we have sports events Boston of course is a sports crazy town. And so we always have usually have some sporting event but also if there is no sporting event I will use that crusade to go and shoot a story with a reporter and then we will cut it back at the station. We have you know so we have perhaps in every newscast of four to six things that have never been on the air before and how many minutes of that program has been assembled by you and I have not been seen before.

On the average how many minutes do you have that in his entire time when new material is entirely new material of an 11 o'clock show I would say you probably have four minutes of entirely new material. What you have I mean just entirely for news. I only have 11 to 14 minutes for news then you have you know two minutes and 30 seconds to two minutes and 45 seconds for weather and you have four minutes for sports and the rest is commercial time and. And I also have an entertainment reporter I have two minutes for my entertainment report we have nightly. But you know to tell what's happening in the world in 11 minutes in a new community is really outrageous. How much of the time do you have for the world. Well that's that's a distressing thought. We probably spend on any one night two minutes of the 11:00 two to two to maybe two to three of world events maybe.

But there is you know such stories like the Yana story. We will spend much more time on our national international stories have you ever broken because of a routine because a very very very important story in the time that you've been in Boston or Phoenix or Tucson where everybody said all the rules are by the board don't worry too much about sports. Tonight we've got to go after this story. Oh sure we have. At the station I work at NBC affiliate here we have an what we call an eye team an investigative unit. And it's a 10 person team which does nothing but investigative reports they will never work on on daily assignments. And they've come up with various reports from corruption and carelessness at the State House to police Boston policeman some Boston policemen drinking on the job. They documented by following them around with a special night camera for a month. So when you have special reports like that. I will go to whether I'll say I'm really

in a bind. You can only go 115 tonight or go to sports not say you have 230 or 245 tonight and you know usually you know their understanding because they understand this is heavy news night and also they don't have a lot of choice. If the producer says whoever it is that you only have X amount of minutes you know that's basically what they can go they can you know push it but they'll be getting a floor director there giving a very strong raps and well now you are in fact the general in charge of the troops for this whole program. One of your predecessors who was a former student of mine and a gallant individual is a foodie who now I believe connected with the John Chancellor Muses and Walter Cronkite Walter Cronkite he was with the other network and he's that man behind the scenes who put everything together. What troubles do you have or what are some of the generic troubles that producers would have with the troops as they put them to their marching places of an

evening. What are some of the problems that you would run up against. You have you have various troubles I mean you have various troubles that change in different markets if you're working sometimes in a smaller market we call markets you know cities Phoenix is a smaller market than Boston Tucson is a smaller market than Phoenix. And basically what it it's for is for ratings and ratings or for advertisers so you get more money we charge more money than other stations do because we have supposedly higher ratings than the other stations. When you're a smaller market you sometimes worry about competence you worry about your reporter knowing the legal ramifications of what he or she is saying. You worry about them making a clear statement and you will go over their script almost more for even grammar than you will for for many other things when you reach a Boston it's not that these problems are totally absent It's just that they're far far rarer.

And you know your problems change to become sometimes ego problems. Any that you have in you have a co-anchor system of people who read the news who are known as anchor people. Is that the ego that you have already had with a reporter you have anchor men who are over we have a large egos we have reporters who are large egos you have writers who have large egos that you tell them I don't like the way this is written this isn't clear. And they might be in the business 10 years longer than you and they might obviously be older than you they might be male they might be female but they might take offense at what you're saying and what I'm not. So what I try to do is you learn some sort of tact. I am told that it's better not to be tactful better just to be forceful by one management person. But I think for the comfort of a continuous working relationship if you you know slam your fist down too many times you lose any sort of power and it's it's better to develop.

Attitude and ability to say this really doesn't say what we want because this is what we're trying to express and it will fit in better in the show if we say it this way. Let me ask you another question that is even more important than the ones I've been dwelling on. It's 11pm most of us are getting ready to go to bed. We're a little bit more serious about the news some of us are in bed watching in a horizontal position. We're little bit more serious about the news earlier in the day when we might have all sorts of the African news programs or isn't it glorious that we have news on at this hour so early in the afternoon kind of thing. And we're watching the news and you have two or three minutes for this or three or four minutes for that perhaps you have six or seven minutes for your own creativity or perhaps up to 10 minutes for your own creativity and the rest is filler The rest is whether the rest is sports and announcements and all sorts of thing. We hear that it's very difficult for minorities to get their stories told.

We're not only worried on the local level but we hear this at the Paris Conference of UNESCO's Oh I heard it in Cairo It's been bouncing back and forth in the nation in the States and internationally. How can people get their stories told if we're so frozen in a format that permits a minute here two minutes there one camera crew out or two if there's no sports. It's a problem it's a real dilemma. You know unfortunately someone who is a David Rockefeller knows how to deal with the media knows how to get his stories on. Or someone who deals with with with big dollars and and is constantly in front of the camera knows what to do to provoke the mass media. The commercial television and radio stations to come out to that event and cover it. If you are poor or of a ethnic minority

it's hard. It really is the only thing I can say is I know that you know stations do have a commitment I mean they are they are licensed to have a commitment so they. They morally want to have a commit they should want to but even if they don't they they governmentally have to have a commitment basically just inform stations this is what the story is tell them far enough in advance and hopefully you know they can get it at least their crew without a reporter there maybe and hopefully they'll get their crew with a reporter there. What we do at our station and I notice here in the east much more than than in the West and I don't know why but there is much more interest in minority reports. There aren't enough. But there is a greater interest and there is a greater effort to cover all aspects of the city we have here in Boston a very diverse city from college students to every

socio background that you can have and you know covering that is very difficult. There is no one story that will interest all of our audience and. We do have some portion of the audience every night. Well it is a problem space you know following the news. Most stations not just yours but most stations will go to an unlimited scheduling of some film or some Johnny Carson program with lots of commercials interrupting they're not worried about spacing out the next three hours even if they have to with that sort of thing. But they are worried about this 15 minutes. Is there something that we ought to look into about the 15 minutes in other words should we have more flexible space. Pretty should we really be presenting some documentaries on the evening news or a segment three. One of the the networks has. Yes sure. I mean ideally you'd love to. I know I

personally have put proposals forward for that but there's there are so many problems or so many logistical problems that if I have 11 or 12 minutes of news and to do a documentary type report a segment we report a lot so that you have to have an hour of news. Well OK the problem with that is you know is commercial television commercial television wants to be much more set than public television can I know there are some stations around the country that will put on a 15 minute newscast if there isn't much news in a 45 minute or an hour newscast if there is a lot of news and you'd like to think that's a way you could do it because some nights filling a half hour newscast which is 11 minutes or 12 minutes. And this isn't easy because you don't have information that is really that valuable and really needs to be expressed Ideally I would love to work in that situation. But realistically considering that it is commercial television considering that our audience it is thought a lot of them stay up to watch the news because they want to see Johnny Carson.

You know I mean you will disappoint more of your audience if you don't give them Johnny Carson exactly time. Not only that there's a contract with the Johnny Carson show that you cannot enter Johnny Carson late you cannot join the show in progress. And I know when I've had breaking news stories and you know it gets to be a real problem of a story that's breaking you have a live crew there a crew with live capability that can broadcast from the scene back to the television station. You really want to put that report on and you really want to give it some depth and importance and instead you tell your porter You have 45 seconds to tell me that story because I've got to get done with you report out of the show and join Johnny Carson on time. So it's very frustrating. You are then squeezed for one of the most important news programs of the whole day you're squeezed between the entertainment which starts at about 7:30 and ends just before your program and starts immediately after your program so there really is no breathing space for you at all you cannot back up into the

program that's just hard. So therefore do you think we ought to depend upon Ed Asner and his program what is the name brand Grant look grand for all of our news of the night when we cannot get it on the 15 minute. No. You know I just I went anyway out of this problem. I think there is a way out that is that I think if you talk to anyone in the business who works in the business of gathering and putting out news they will say they hope earnestly that people read newspapers read magazines watch public television watch listen to public radio listen to radio stations. Because you're not going to get all the day's news you're going to get a capsule of what that station thinks is the day's most important news. And the breaking news on that newscast next we're going to get in any one newscast even an hour newscast at 6:00 I think you have something like 29 minutes for news you know an hour newscast 29 minutes of news. It seems ridiculous but that's what it breaks down to. So

you know really I think it's just most important that people don't rely just on television as a bulletin service. Now pretty much it's something something more than that. It's more than a bulletin service is when you get to a report. I mean we do have something else I mean even if you only show a minute and a half it's your if you show 30 seconds you do it tell people what is happening in Iran and show people protesting demonstrators or pictures being worth a thousand words etcetera. It we don't. You concentrate on the the mob in the street when if you had say another 30 seconds or a minute and a half or six minutes you might go into the the background of the religious leaders or if you had another six you might go into how the middle class lives or why so many people can't read or write and certainly we don't really do that so what's that. That's what we leave out that's the guts of the reports all we see then are the people marching in the street and all the people in Iran see presumably under a very tightly controlled news arrangement other people not marching in the streets.

It's you know it's interesting because you'll have families somewhere else in the world or in the country and you know they'll hear a report this is what happened in Boston or this is what happened you know in San Francisco or something and they'll think Oh my God because this is all it's told about San Francisco you think that is what San Francisco is it is a problem. You get a very narrow view of what is happening. We really don't have the time we try not to speak in too broad generalities when we write the story we try to give some specifics yet in 30 seconds you have to speak in some degree of generalities and therefore not give great depth of understanding to your person you're reading. You've read a whole bunch on this you've read wire copy it read articles and you understand. You think to some degree what is happening. You talk to people who've been there but then what you have to do is just give the tip. You are in the American Southwest you noted some of the differences or distinctions in Boston.

What is it like to do the same thing in Phoenix or Tucson are there any nuances that are local or regional from your experiences or is there any sort of a more gentle approach or more different interests in in the southwest. It really to give you an illustration we have heard from the reporters who went down there to investigate the slaying of Mr. Bowles about two years ago. There are some of the newspapers don't cover some of the items that might be covered in some of the radio and television stations keep away from some of the political leaders or were charges. I would have oh I don't I really honestly don't think so I mean I can speak specifically of Phoenix briefly with regard to the boss case because I worked quite a bit on that. Honestly the inner city like like there are many cities unfortunately this country that has one newspaper it's an afternoon in the morning newspaper but it's one newspaper owned by you know one person or a group. And whenever you have that you have a problem because you only get so much news coverage and you only get it from their perspective. But it's

that newspaper that had Don Bolles doing investigative reporting. And although there is a lot of things I don't like personally about the newspaper I don't know that they can be condemned to such a great degree. I think they can be condemned for example for not airing the investigative reporters and editors report their twenty three part report which you know seemed silly after the fact. But as far as as I think you know television stations and using that is the case. I think that points up the fact television stations have so many minutes a night. You have only saying honesty in a station in Phoenix you might have eight or 10 reporters eight or 10 reporters to cover the day's news but that's also all you have for the whole week and you have to spread them out for seven days a week and you don't you can't say to a reporter All right you have three days to go find out about this. But how long do you give him or her you give a reporter two hours and then you expect him to come back and write that story and then come go out and cover another story and come back and write that story and then maybe go out on a third.

Now if you're sending a television reporter out you're presumably standing with a guy with a crew camera crew. And so he actually has a predisposition to fill up some tape and to bring you something that can be shown. Yes not all stories can be shown though. That's how the love stories are what we call non-TV stories we call them you know newspaper stories because it's very hard to visualize them. And because of that I mean things like land fraud which has been a major problem in Arizona that's a it's a paper story it's very hard to visualize a story like that. I think that the stations were at fault for not covering it to a great degree. I don't think there was any malice or any intent to deceive I think it was just simply an inability to handle the magnitude of that kind of report and in Arizona it might be land fraud somewhere else it's another problem. But frankly I know that Arizona reporters and journalists took some degree of offense to your Easterners come out and say look at you're not covering this as it should be.

When you come out to New York or to Philly or to Scranton Pennsylvania and you have rampant organized crime crime that is organized there isn't a metropolitan area that can raise its head high and say we are really covering it. You know it's not that you have a great deal. Of pride in what you did but you share that shame maybe we share it. I think you know nationally because of we we gloss over too many issues. So what we call the news then Pamela can is really turn of the kaleidoscope or just one have turn and we catch as much as we can of the important things that cover the whole of the community by saying that we therefore eliminate a lot of the community don't we because they don't meet that standard. That's really true. You really have to pick and choose you know some nights you might think it's very important what is happening say in Rhodesia or in Angola but you know it may lose out it may not get on your newscast because you think your community needs to know

more about what is happening say in a South Boston or a Roxbury. And so again your community is gypped of that national international. And more often than not national international will lose out to or to local or regional I think that's that the bias and bad now of local stations we're becoming much more isolationist more provincial more provincial. So we have to watch the network news there. And as the news expands in terms of time on all the station network and local news it seems to be compressing in terms of where we can see something about the international and national affairs still even if you have an hour we have an hour and a half news two different newscasts in the early evening. And still it's very limited what you will see of national and international news. Is it any wonder then that Johnny can't read. We do we do wonders with the television and certainly I. I see your job a little bit more clearly. You're about after this program about to go to your own network's offices here in Boston and prepare the 11 p.m. news for the

first 15 minutes the hardest stories of the last 15 minutes before air time in the last 15 the last 15 minutes but I certainly want to thank you very much Pamela Kahn the the producer of the 11 p.m. news on the NBC affiliate in Boston for sharing with us some of your experiences from the American Southwest and from the American northeast about how this thing that so influences our First Amendment. This thing called nudes is packaged in some of the problems that you have for this edition. Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media. He denied himself on it. The program was produced in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. I w GBH radio Boston which is solely responsible for its Carter. This is the station program exchange.