Social media is killing news/talk radio on immediacy, and there are several factors leading to this. I am going to give you some old-man takes, some modern conundrums, and ways to address them.
One of my goals in these little columns is to identify problems that we all experience in news/talk radio and try to find some solutions for our challenges. My ideas may not be perfect, but hopefully these thought starters will allow you to build and innovate.
You get a call at the station about a shooting at a gas station outside of town. You can’t go on the air with that anonymous information. But there is likely a social media account in your community that is going with the story.
Your station’s news anchor on duty calls the cop shop, and you are informed that the public information officer will call you back tomorrow. This is a real scenario. Now, is that social media account correct? Sometimes yes, but oftentimes the answer is no. What are we doing as an industry? Does the anchor prerecord the next newscast and drive to the alleged site of the shooting?
Depending on the distance, that may be a bad idea. Do you run with the social media reports of that shooting? No matter what you do, it is a no-win for your station’s credibility. TV is suffering through this problem as well.
We live in an on-demand world. People expect immediate information, and with their cell phones, they can get it. So, I have attempted to do some things with limited success. If you speak with your local and state officials, they constantly bitch about independent journalists.
Government Communications Can’t Keep Up
Sadly, the rise of independent journalists has several indicting factors that no one seems to want to address. Most government communications people with media experience come from newspapers or TV. The newspaper people took decades to adjust to an online world, and the former scribes working for our government institutions are not living in the reality of the public’s expectations of immediate information. The TV people are a little better, but their DNA is focused on 5, 6 and 10, or 11 if you are in the Eastern time zone.
It’s about immediacy. I have gone out of my way to meet with local officials privately. These meetings have been totally off the record. Every government official I have met hates these faux journalists, yet they don’t want to address the issue.
One of the communities that one of my stations covers has bulked up its communications department. 30 people are now in the business of letting the public know what is going on. Since this commitment to information began, my radio station has received the same level of service.
Now, I met with the communications leader for lunch, and he thought that in-the-moment communications from the city were unrealistic. The last time there was severe weather or a community emergency, did you tell your boss that it was unrealistic to come into the office to broadcast the latest information? Hell, I run into the office on those occasions, and you probably do as well.
Public Safety Is Built on Immediacy
So, public safety is built on immediacy. If there is a crime scene, an evacuation of a mall, a big accident, or a road shutdown due to a fire, the public needs to be informed quickly. Working off calls from listeners is fine, but we recently had a huge accident on a main interstate. We could not confirm it on state cameras, so my news anchor called the highway patrol at 7:15 in the morning. He was informed that only the public information officer can share that information and that the individual would be in at 8:30.
So, we were trying to broadcast accurate information, and we were stuck with listener accounts. We kept asking about mile markers and received several different locations for the same accident. The morning drive news anchors on my stations have decades of experience in their communities and continually run into roadblocks like this.
The social media people don’t have the ethics that we do our level best to follow. This is a huge problem.
A Better Approach for Public Information Officers
Perhaps you have a smarter tactic than I do. I have found that a large number of public information officers want to share complete information. This is great, but if there is a disturbance downtown with a report of shots fired, immediate information is key. The statement from the police department is easy enough to share.
The PIO can release a statement like this: “Several reports of potential shots fired around 9th and Walnut. Officers are at the scene, and information will be released as it is collected and confirmed. Please avoid the 9th and Walnut area for the next three hours.”
This is much better than releasing a statement nine hours later, with misinformation flooding the market from social media in real time.
Radio Is Essential When Everything Else Fails
One of the expectations that we have in news/talk radio is being connected to our communities. News/talk radio is expected to be connected to the latest information in our city, state, nation and world. Obviously, we can’t be everywhere all the time. I am big on building commonalities. I try to find the things that connect us to each other. Speaking with policymakers makes a lot of sense. This is a job for the program director or news director, depending on your situation. Explain the problem and offer your platform to help the city and state. We do this all the time.
Considering the speed of email and texts, we should have the information in real time. Technically, our broadcast license mandates that we serve the public. I was in New York City during Superstorm Sandy. There was limited cell phone availability, and the internet ran into issues. Radio was it. The simple transistor radio was key.
I am guessing that during recent natural disasters in North Carolina and the fires in Malibu and the Palisades, radio was the only option as well. We are essential. Radio’s connection with our leaders is so important.
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