What qualifies as TV news? Most anything

COMMENTARY

By Frazier Moore

updated 5:59 p.m. ET June 21, 2004

NEW YORK - News from the Mideast and Washington last week was especially dismaying.

And then, on a much different track, was the bulletin last Thursday datelined SPLITSVILLE: Jesse and Jessica were through.

Years from now, we’ll all remember where we were when we found out: New York Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer and Jessica Bowlin, the soul mate he had chosen on “The Bachelor,” had called it quits.

Who saw that coming!

Almost a whole month ago, we had seen Palmer select Bowlin, a 22-year-old California law student, over the other blond finalist, Tara something. Choosing Jessica was a decision Jesse had reached only after an exhaustive courtship of 25 would-be Ms. Rights on the ABC romantic-reality series. But at the end, proclaimed Palmer, it had hit him “like a ton of bricks”: Bowlin was his one and only.

Now this bombshell!

To make matters worse, the story broke not on ABC’s own “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” but on the syndicated TV entertainment show “Extra.”

How could ABC News, which had followed Palmer’s odyssey on “Good Morning America,” get scooped when his “incredible romantic journey” took this dire turn?

Here comes the bride
Granted, the folks at ABC News had their hands full with other breaking news. There were also scheduled programs to prepare.

Friday at 10 p.m. ET, Peter Jennings reports on the prison camp at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay holding some 600 detainees, many under questionable circumstances, in connection with America’s war on terror.

And there’s also the ABC News series “Weddings Gone Wacky, Wonderful And Wild: Anything For Love,” which premiered last week for five Monday airings.

That first episode rehashed the story about a New York bride left at the altar by her cold-footed groom. Another segment featured basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and his bride, Shaunie, waxing on about their lavish wedding ceremony — back in December 2002.

Even with a last-minute title change to the no-nonsense “Weddings,” this series surely struck many viewers as embarrassingly silly, the sort of fluff we might more readily have expected from a news source like, well, “Extra.”

Still, “Extra” doesn’t have what ABC News has: a heavyweight news anchor with years of news cred like Diane Sawyer, backed by respected correspondents Cynthia McFadden, Deborah Roberts and Elizabeth Vargas.

What were they doing on “Weddings”?! On its premiere, Sawyer tried to explain, “Some of us at ABC News are taking a kind of holiday from our usual reporting.”

Taking leave of their journalistic senses is more like it.

Anything can be news
Or maybe not. Maybe we viewers should finally get over our fusty ideals for what merits attention by a major newsgathering organization. Let’s get real. TV news can be justified as anything a TV news operation wants to put on the air with its name attached.

And if what’s treated as news also touts an entertainment show airing on the network, that’s really good news! If there’s anything better than TV news that generates an audience for itself, it’s news that boosts viewership elsewhere on the schedule.

CBS News, where Edward R. Murrow once pioneered courageous broadcast journalism, has more recently made hay covering made-for-TV news like its own network’s “Survivor,” unconcerned that every “breaking development” was taped months before its release to the public. No matter. News isn’t news until somebody sees it.

Meanwhile, NBC News is building on its journalistic heritage with hours of coverage of such NBC shows as “The Apprentice” and the finales of “Friends” and “Frasier.” Clearly, NBC News queen bee Katie Couric and her colleagues are also taking a kind of holiday from informing their viewers, to sell them other NBC fare.

But even for a serious correspondent on a serious newsmagazine, salesmanship is part of the journalism game.

CBS News’ Dan Rather was busy last week granting interviews to print and broadcast (including CBS News’ “Early Show” as well as “Extra”) to promote Bill Clinton’s appearance with him on “60 Minutes” Sunday.

Rather’s mission was not to inform viewers on the substance of that taped interview with the former president, as much as to tease them into watching the show (itself the TV kickoff for Clinton’s own publicity blitz to hawk his memoirs, published this week).

As one of the chosen to get an early look at “My Life,” Rather, the intrepid reporter, had agreed not to report what he had read. And he wasn’t likely to scoop himself by giving away the best stuff from his interview before it aired.

Viewers, therefore, would just have to wait. But is that really news?

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