VOICES: REPORTING
Wagging the Dog: Technology and Local TV News

BY C.A. TUGGLE

The announcer promises live, local, late-breaking news as the theme music of the news show rises to a crescendo. The news operation then delivers, as promised, a number of live reports from across the market. Somewhere, though, the late-breaking part of the promise is lost as reporters deliver instead what some in the business call "black hole" shots, live reports from in front of dark buildings long after the relevant activity has ended and everyone (except the news crew) has gone home.

This is not an uncommon scenario. Media observers and practitioners alike are annoyed, or even alarmed, at the tendency to "go live" when there is no journalistic reason for doing so. Two colleagues and I recently sent a survey to 211 media markets across the country. Reporters who responded said again and again that their ability to gather news and tell stories suffers when they are tethered to a camera tied to a live unit providing pictures of nothing. Because they cannot leave the site of the live report, reporters are, in fact, unable to dig for additional facts, to add context -- in short, to report.

Worse, as one reporter put it, the prevailing attitude seems to be "a live truck shall not gather dust," leading news producers and managers to look for events that lend themselves to easy live coverage rather than letting the merits of the story dictate whether such coverage is warranted. Others in the survey expressed dismay about the amount of coverage events receive just because they happen close to or during the news hour.

Yet live reporting seems to have become the norm. In our analysis of newscasts from markets of varying size, reporters appeared live 42 percent more often than they did on tape. Live reports were considerably longer than taped reports, which means fewer stories get covered when there are several live reports in a newscast.

Based on comments from news directors and reporters who responded to the original survey, researchers devised a scale of zero to four to rate the value of live reports. What the practitioners called "black hole" live reports rated a zero. A report in which the reporter obtained updated information by being on scene was assigned a rating of one. A report containing compelling visuals or involving a "tour" from the reporter rated a two. Reports from planned events in progress scored a three, and the highest rating, four, went to coverage of legitimate breaking news. The results: half of the reports that showed only the reporter and no related taped video rated a zero, and 90 percent of the stories that involved a live reporter introduction and/or tag to a taped piece also rated zero. In only a handful of cases did a live report rate three or four on the scale. Simply put, most stories that were reported live contained no late-breaking news and did not, in a journalistic sense, warrant live coverage at all. Frequently, reporters were at the site of an event that had happened hours or even days earlier.

Though one news director told us that viewers will use the remote to find a newscast that contains live reporting if his station isn't doing it, viewers are sophisticated enough to see the difference between legitimate and gratuitous uses of technology. Results from a third study show that viewers value reports from the scene of news that is unfolding, especially involving weather. Indeed, there are times, viewers tell us, that live reporting enhances coverage of the story, giving them insight and context they would not get from another type of report. However, they also agree, overwhelmingly, that there are times when live reports are meaningless. One viewer characterized this as a bait-and-switch tactic. He looks at the screen thinking "live" indicates important news. Yet, he is often disappointed to find no "real news" at all.

Many viewers say that they think reporting live from outside the house of a couple whose son was shot the night before is intrusive and in poor taste. That is one of the biggest complaints that viewers have about live reporting -- that it is often an invasion of privacy and results in the exploitation of victims of tragedies.

The second of viewers' three major complaints is that TV news wastes time on unimportant stories. One viewer wrote that when news operations go live after the fact to cover stories that are relatively inconsequential to begin with, it is "condescending to the viewers." Viewers also say they disdain live reports that seem to have no end. Viewers think that "reporters wind up making news rather than reporting it" and "sound as though they're just filling time."

Another viewer wrote that stations should spend money on content rather than on excessive use of technology. Many news observers and practitioners would agree. Live reporting should be used when it helps tell a story. But often, according to both reporters and viewers, the technology adds little at best and, at worst, forces solid journalism to take a back seat.

C.A. Tuggle is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before earning his Ph.D., he spent sixteen years as a reporter and producer, including eleven years at station WFLA in Tampa.