The discussion among newsroom colleagues began oddly enough with the latest news coming out of the U.S. Senate race in Georgia.
No doubt you’ve been following it, former pro football running back Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate endorsed by former President Trump is trying to unseat the incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock.
So far, no issues with that description of the current goings-on, I trust.
At present, a second woman has come forward to accuse Walker of pressuring her into getting an abortion back in the 1990s when he is currently running on an anti-abortion platform.
What became a topic of conversation and scrutiny were not the reports of continued and growing support for Walker and the discounting by followers of the accusers’ claims but instead the continued and growing public scoffing, skepticism and outright discounting of all news coverage reporting the accusations against Walker.
So, it remains apparent that a considerable portion of the news audience simply doesn’t believe the coverage.
Or is it they choose not to believe it?
Allegiance aside, is it possible to make a political or national story believable across the board?
Local stories, unless strongly political or candidate intensive do not appear to suffer the same nay responses.
Criticism or refusal seems staunchly slotted for the network and the cable stations. Certainly, some of that is richly deserved but when is a news outlet no longer telling a story and instead just spinning its wheels?
The people staffing those newsrooms have to be asking themselves, “Are they ever going to believe anything we say?”
It may sound flippant but an audience that chooses not to accept the details of one story makes just as easily discount anything we, as an outlet report. Are the numbers we front conceived as accurate or is everything tainted with left or right-leaning or a perceived agenda?
“Don’t believe what CBS is saying about the investigation but you can trust Fox’s report”.
“Newsmax will only give you their slant so go over to MSNBC for the balance”.
Familiarity and comfort win out there.
When does the news as a service become merely subjective and how does the business remedy that problem?
Becoming subjective does not work for an already struggling entity.
Instead of doing surveys on what stories will keep a person renewing their newspaper subscription or what the anchors should be wearing or how this one’s hair looks, the questions to the customer should be, “How do we get your trust back?” or “What makes us credible”?
As I offered earlier, integrity questions really are less of a struggle for the local outlets.
The singular homicide arrests, the condemned house with two-hundred cats or the town fair rarely raise doubts in regards to reliability or bias to the degree a network’s reputation might but it’s still a concerning proposition for any news platform moving forward.
Does it come down to being less dramatic and more discerning?
Is a massive scale-down on graphics and hyperbole called for in order to reel the non-believers back in?
People do the entertainment factor but it does come at a cost.
It appears CNN was at least in the first stages of a shift but so far, the most notable things to be noticed from their corner are words of budget cuts, layoffs and nervous employees.
Bill Zito has devoted most of his work efforts to broadcast news since 1999. He made the career switch after serving a dozen years as a police officer on both coasts. Splitting the time between Radio and TV, he’s worked for ABC News and Fox News, News 12 New York , The Weather Channel and KIRO and KOMO in Seattle. He writes, edits and anchors for Audacy’s WTIC-AM in Hartford and lives in New England. You can find him on Twitter @BillZitoNEWS.
