MMMM # 80 - The Week On The Toob

     The N.Y. Times  reports on one notable network moment this past week in coverage of the Haiti disaster, crediting Television with making the magnitude of the disaster apparent, while at the same time sometimes stepping perilously close to the line between reportage and self-congratulation:

On Thursday night Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, led a camera crew through one of the few remaining hospitals in the region. As he passed wounded and dying victims, he explained that there were no doctors or nurses there to treat them. But CNN made a point of repeatedly showing another scene in which Dr. Gupta ran through the street to minister to an infant, the camera lingering on him as he cradled her in his arms and examined her head for lacerations.

     The quake had Brian Williams over at NBC scurrying to Haiti, where his early sat-phone report had him mentioning that they would be sleeping on the floor of an aircraft hanger that night.

Meanwhile in The Washington Post, a story about the willingness of the media, broadcast and not, to show what previously had been taboo:

Bodies caked in dust and plaster, faces covered in blood, the dead stacked in the streets without sheets to hide them -- these are all violations of the unwritten code that death can only be seen, in the established etiquette of the mainstream media, by analogy or metaphor or discreet substitute.

     But in my own experience, the self-imposed ban is usually only in effect for dead and suffering Americans. The media has been showing dead foreigners forever.


     Before Brian Willians and the other network anchors moved their shows to the Island, there was anothe rmoment of note with Williams opening editorial about Mark McGuire's admission of steroid use:

“Because this is a family broadcast, we probably can’t say what we’d like to about the {McGuire} news today.”
                                                           Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News

     He also probably shouldn't, but in fact did so by his non-statement statement.

     And then there was the great Jay Leno story, which threatened to overcome all of the networks before the quake distracted them. You almost never see the nets reporting about events across the broadcast aisle. In fact I'm convinced if you were to trace all of the book authors and movie directors and stars interviewed on the net and cable news shows, there would be a distinct line from most stories to a corporate-sister publisher or movie studio.
     But the Leno story was an exception...it was all over ABC and CBS as well as on NBC and cable. And that's because there was a negative edge to it. If Leno's excursion into PrimeTime had been a rousing success, you wouldn't have heard word one, especially on ABC and CBS.
     NBC's coverage is a good example of why broadcasters should have an ombudsman/woman on staff who has complete independence, who can cover stories in which the broadcaster has a vested interest. Either that, or bring in an outsider on retainer to cover it fairly.
    
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature on this blog.]