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BACK TO : WAR & CRISIS REPORTING
Can we believe what we see on the screen? from ABC For all its technical wizardry, there are this week questions over whether the television reporting on the war in Iraq helped unravel key questions, such as the existence of WMDs and Iraq's links to al-Qaeda. Can we believe what we see on the screen? The Media Report: 12 June 2003 - Current Thinking on Current Affairs [This is the print version of story  ]
Mick O'Regan: Welcome to the program. This week we'll hear from two men who are leaders in perhaps the most important area of television production: News and Current Affairs. One of them is Channel Seven's Peter Meakin, who until earlier this year ran Australia's most successful commercial operation on the Nine Network; and the other is Lowell Berman, an American current affairs producer so significant he was even portrayed by Al Pacino in the 1999 movie, 'The Insider', and they're both coming up on The Media report. Mick O'Regan: 2003 has been a year of contested information. Now that's hardly surprising, given the dominance of a war that divided communities around the world. For the media, the story of the war and its aftermath is the story of the year, so far. And enormous amounts of time and money were devoted to producing programs covering the details of the conflict. Yet despite the technical wizardry of satellite communications, the elaborate news centre set up by the military in Dohar, and the presence of embedded correspondents, did we get the whole picture? Did we cover the action of the war, but didn't investigate the arguments justifying it? Now there's an international debate continuing over the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and alleged links between al Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein, So I thought it might be interesting to hear what two highly regarded TV current affairs producers thought of the coverage. Our first guest, as I said, is the Director of News & Current Affairs at the Seven Network, Peter Meakin, who used to be the boss of News at Nine. His departure for Channel Seven was big news, and he's now been in the job a few months. So, how is Channel Seven responding to the Meakin agenda? Peter Meakin: I think the regime here at the moment from Kerry Stokes down, realise that if we're going to have a strong network, we have to have a strong information base to build that network on. Mick O'Regan: So you'd see that as definitive of the network, of the quality of its news and current affairs? Peter Meakin: It's the way we're going. Mick O'Regan: Is Channel Nine your model for that? Peter Meakin: No. Mick O'Regan: Why not? Peter Meakin: Well the fact is we're not going to beat Channel Nine by being Channel Nine, we're not going to follow the Channel Nine model, we're going to strike out on our own. And we've done it already, and before I joined Sunrise was a conspicuously different program from today, and it's making considerable inroads. Today Tonight is a conspicuously different program from A Current Affair, or from what we were told Current Affair was going to be, and they have a very clear sense of what they're about, what their mission is, whereas I think confusion reigns at Willoughby. Mick O'Regan: That confusion reigns at Channel Nine; you would argue now that they're uncertain as to where they're going? Peter Meakin: Well I think there's been a lot of expectations created over there about the Q-word, Quality, and just what that means. Mick O'Regan: What do you think it means as far as news and current affairs programming is concerned? Peter Meakin: Most people who use the word 'quality' mean current affairs programs that are indigestible. My mission at Nine and my mission here at Seven is to make programs that people want to watch, not as I've said before, to preach to an empty church. The first thing we have to do is we have to have a clear vision of what we're trying to achieve, and I think people like Craig McPherson at Today Tonight here, and Adam Boland, have a very clear vision. And I think the vision at Nine at the moment is blurred. We certainly wouldn't be trying to emulate people with blurred vision. Mick O'Regan: In going across to Channel Seven, I mean there was much made that effectively the king pin, namely you, of Channel Nine's news and current affairs, had gone across to the enemy camp; did you see your brief as to somehow change the way that Channel Seven did news and current affairs? And what I'm driving at here is, did you feel as though you had to start from the ground up? Peter Meakin: No, I didn't. And the first thing that impressed me was that there's some very good people at Seven, and certainly we've made some changes, but that I suppose was inevitable, it might have happened if I hadn't joined, but I'm not of the opinion that I have to sort of build the whole fabric and rebuild the structure here, because I don't need to do that. Things are progressing pretty damn well. Mick O'Regan: In looking at the fabric, what are the key things that you would need to convince yourself existed to say 'OK I know this structure is solid and we can improve on it', were you looking for particular criteria that indicated that Seven was in good shape regarding news and current affairs? Peter Meakin: Well the only issue as far as I was concerned was that management had a commitment to news and current affairs, which they've satisfied me they do have, and b) that that commitment would be properly resourced. And event hough times have tightened throughout the industry, and at Seven, I think we have the resources to do the job, and the people. And we're going to get a few more good people, too. Mick O'Regan: To come back to this notion of quality, because I know you've spoken of it before, I know that in some circles it's simply dismissed as an elitist idea within news and current affairs, but looking back on the major stories of this year, particularly stories to do with the conflict in Iraq, do you think that people watching Australian television current affairs across the board, do you think that they receive what you would say was quality coverage of those events? Peter Meakin: I think by and large they did. I think there were some omissions, I think it was a lot better covered than the last Gulf War, and that was largely because the Americans allowed more access. I think when it comes to covering the Australian situation, the Defence Department was a bloody disgrace, because they didn't allow access. But I think the journalists did their best. Clearly some of them could have done a bit better but by and large I think the performance by all networks was pretty good. Mick O'Regan: There's been an ongoing debate, particularly in the US, looking at the difference between I suppose the technical capacity to take reporters to the front line, and the whole debate about embedding, which has been carried on in various programs, and then looking at the quality of news coverage in analysing the key premises that justified the war, such as the existence of weapons of mass destruction, such as the allegations that there was a direct link between al Qa'eda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. What's your view on the argument that the technical, the sort of bells and whistles stuff was done very well, and we got right to the front and saw the shells going off, but there was very little analysis of those key tenets that justified the war. Peter Meakin: Look I think there's been a fair bit of examination of the weapons of mass destruction issue, and the other issue. I don't pretend that people should get all their information from television, I think it's one of many news sources. When you're getting pictures live from all round the world, the time for analysing those pictures and analysing events is sometimes restricted. And that's a weakness of television. I mean television is terrific for giving an impressing, for giving you the base news, but analysis is probably better handled by some other sources, because what we do know is that panel discussions in the studio by learned professors talking about weapons of mass destruction, is not going to attract an audience. So brevity is the key word on television, and these are serious issues and I don't suggest that the public should rely entirely on television for all their information sources. Mick O'Regan: And yet isn't that idea, that the public can rely on specific television networks for their news and current affairs information, the driving idea behind the advertising, that what viewers are told is that Here's the place that you will get the full picture, here's the place where you will get the complete story. Peter Meakin: Yes you'll get news, and hopefully the news is not distorted, it's presented in a kosher and honest manner, but I don't support campaign of All the news you need to know, and all that sort of stuff, I think that sounds ridiculous. Mick O'Regan: Is it fair to say then, that for network television, the idea of being there in the sense of being able to show people images of the front, was more important than knowing why we were there? Peter Meakin: Well the day-to-day developments were of vital importance and vital interest. The premise on which the war was founded is something that has been analysed on commercial television and public television. Maybe it could have been done a bit more, but we're talking here not about a mission, about a question of degree. Mick O'Regan: Within Channel Seven, in establishing and developing the news culture that you've spoken of already, do you address issues like bias and balance? Peter Meakin: Yes, I do, and if the audience perceives that someone is biased or ramming a viewpoint down their throats, then that's of course a major cause for concern. But going back many years, someone like Mike Willesee would do an interview and you'd get complaints it was biased to the left or biased to the right, or whatever; and bias is in the eye of the beholder quite often. Mick O'Regan: Do you think that this issue of bias and balance can be dealt with looking at an individual program, or are you more concerned with the overall accuracy and balance of Seven's output overall, rather than looking say at a particular edition of Today Tonight, or a particular edition of Sunrise? Peter Meakin: I think you've got to look at the total picture here. You've got to look at all the programs, Today Tonight, Sunrise, News. Some programs will contain stories that appear to be biased one way, and another program will appear to be biased the other way. As long as it's not part of some staff conspiracy or management conspiracy, I think we're pretty right. Mick O'Regan: Peter as far as the future of broadcast current affairs goes, do you see the current format of single story, long programs like, say Panorama on the BBC or Four Corners on the ABC, plus short format, you know, Sixty Minutes and programs like that, that's the future, or do you see that there are developments within current affairs reporting or production that will change in the next few years? Peter Meakin: That's a good question. And I honestly don't know the answer to it. I think single issue, one hour programs are going to remain the preserve of the ABC, Four Corner, well 45 minutes; I think Sixty Minutes has a pretty golden future, but in most current affairs I think brevity's going to be the key. Mick O'Regan: Is that your conclusion based on what the audience can absorb? Peter Meakin: The audience's attention span is getting shorter and shorter in my view. It's driven by video games and the younger generation's ability to absorb about three information streams at the same time. So I think that's the trend, and it's probably a danger, too, because the risk of the future is increasing superficiality. Mick O'Regan: And what do you do to counter that? Peter Meakin: Well, it sounds ridiculous, but the best you can do is to make long form stories more digestible and more attractive. I mean stories do not speak for themselves, they need to be told, they need to be packaged in such a way that the interesting points and the importance of an issue is highlighted, made digestible, and made appealing. It's what a journalist's job is. Mick O'Regan: And he would know. Peter Meakin, Director of News & Current Affairs at the Seven Network. Mick O'Regan: Now to Lowell Bergman, and where better to start than with the man who became him on the Big Screen, Al Pacino. The movie, produced by Touchstone Pictures in 1999, is 'The Insider', the story of how big tobacco companies sought to stop the American Sixty Minutes program broadcasting a damning report on what the cigarette makers knew about their dangerous product. Here's how the celluloid Lowell Bergman reacts when told the main interview with tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand had to be changed or scrapped because of corporate priorities. INSIDER EXCERPT Mick O'Regan: Al Pacino, playing Lowell Bergman in the movie, 'The Insider', a fascinating study of TV journalism, where a former tobacco company executive Jeffrey Wigand, decides to expose the industry on Sixty Minutes. Since his groundbreaking days on that program, Lowell Bergman's career has extended into print journalism and academia. He now writes for The New York Times, and lectures in journalism at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. I was keen to hear Bergman's assessment of contemporary US current affairs television, both in the Iraq war, and more broadly, when I spoke to him earlier this week. Lowell Bergman, welcome to Australia's Radio National, and welcome to The Media Report program. Lowell Bergman: Thanks for inviting me. Mick O'Regan: As we record this interview, there is a growing scandal, particularly in Britain, but to a lesser extent I think in the United States and in Australia, over the quality of the information that was used to justify the war against Iraq. If we looked at that as an example, how do you think investigative reporting is going as far as revealing the decision-making processes and the issues that are important to the war? Lowell Bergman: I don't know if you want to use the term 'investigative reporting' in that matter. First of all, everybody, the standard line which is still true today is that the first casualty of war is the truth, that's always been true. Any government is going to attempt to manipulate information to justify going to war, and to keep people focused on what it wants to accomplish, which is an endorsement of its policy. It's up to the media and to a certain extent other people in the society, to raise questions about that. It appears that the government of the United States and Great Britain produced intelligence reports and information that would give a justification that they hoped the public would buy: weapons of mass destruction, for example, In fact they now say that really what they were after was overthrowing an authoritarian dictatorship. That's not a bad justification either, but the question really is what were they up to, what did they know, and when did they know it. And there really is very little you can do as a reporter to bring that kind of information out, because it's usually classified, it's very hard to get at. Mick O'Regan: Do you feel that there is a groundswell from people who consume the news, from viewers and from listeners, and from people accessing online information websites, that people are hungry for the sort of investigation that they're not being given? Lowell Bergman: I don't know if they're hungry for it or not. I know that they're hungry to get away from a lot of the broadcasts and so-called information broadcasting in the United States, that's why their ratings go down, that's why the polls show people don't trust the broadcasts. The role of the media, in terms of news or public information and a public interest standard, if you will, whether it's print or radio or television, is critical to having a democracy, in terms of democracy where people are informed about their decisions. If you've just going to leave it up to what pays and how people can make money on the short term, then you don't have a really informed or actual democracy in operation. The real problem in coverage is that the most powerful international institutions based primarily in the United States, although some are in Britain and other countries, are multinational corporations, they are not responsible to voters, they're only responsible to shareholders, they have a different motivating power behind them than a government does, and they do affect people's lives, and they're very difficult to take on. They're even more difficult if the media organisations that are involved are interlocked with them, or are part of them. That's part of what's happening in the United States and worldwide, these corporations are gobbling up, if you will, the broadcasting licences and are now able to also buy up print outlets in the United States at the same time. So it's their interest that becomes paramount. I'll give you an example. In the United States, it's virtually impossible on a broadcast network to do an in-depth investigation of the owner of a professional football team. Why? Because they're a supplier to that network of programming which it makes a lot of money off of, and when they don't have those professional football teams on, they lose ratings overall. So it's always difficult for any media outlet to deal with the supplier or an advertiser and be able to report on it. So if you have fewer and fewer companies controlling almost all the outlets, it's going to get more and more difficult to cover the suppliers and the advertisers and the other corporations. That's been true forever in the history of the media, it's just getting worse. This situation was not so different than what existed in the 1960s when there was only 3 television networks in the United States, they dominated the marketplace, there were newspaper chains that dominated the newspaper business, and the result was that people started to create alternative, if you will, news outlets, and various developments in the society itself forced the networks and others to do coverage they had never done before. Mick O'Regan: Those people in the profit making side of the industry, do you think that their general perspective is that people are more interested almost in the way that information is presented rather than the content of the information, so that there has been, it would seem to me, an increased focus on the presentation values associated with information programs like news bulletins or current affairs shows, but there hasn't been the same sort of detailed analysis of the stories that they're putting to air, that basically format has won over content? Lowell Bergman: Well one thing that Mr Murdoch didn't bring to the United States was the format of stars and correspondents in the United States versus presenters and hosts like yourself in Australia. It's a situation where the class differential between the people who present, so-called presenters, we call them talent when you work inside the network news organisations, between what they make for instance annually, and what the people who work in the industry make, who actually do most of the reporting and production and writing, is just phenomenal. They become part of if you will, the logo of the corporate organisation. An example would be Frontline, the only documentary series on US network television, it's on public television, has an annual budget that is less than the annual salary of the host of the Today Show, which is a morning television sort of, if you will, cultural, sometimes newsy, but mostly light fluffy show in the morning, hosted by Katie Couric. Or Diane Sawyer who does the same thing for ABC News, makes more money per year in her basic salary, I'm not talking about perks, the fact that they get hairdressers and first-class air travel if not charters, and all the rest of that, and a staff, her salary is greater than the total production budget of the only documentary news program on American television. Mick O'Regan: In the longer-term, that would seem to be setting a desperate trend, that in the end, what we're going to - Lowell Bergman: This is not a trend, this is an established practice, it's existed for over 25 years, so it's been established this way for quite a while, and you don't expect these people to take the kinds of risks that it would be necessary to take. For example, like Walter Cronkite in 1968 questioning the US policy in Vietnam after he made a personal visit to Vietnam, and sort of challenged the Administration. That's not going to happen in the United States, it doesn't happen. These people who become the voice of the truth will read copy that's given to them, I mean the best example I can give you is that when Phillip Morris sued ABC over a tobacco story, see we're talking 1995, on the air in August of 1995, because ABC was being bought by Disney, and they wanted to clean up the merger, they wanted to get rid of this multi billion dollar libel suit, even though ABC contended that the story was true, they settled the libel suit, paid Phillip Morris $15-million and Diane Sawyer went on the air and read a retraction. Didn't hiccup, didn't say 'I didn't want to do it', didn't say, 'You get somebody else to do it'. They did it. Mick O'Regan: Does that depress you? Lowell Bergman: No. If I got depressed by things like this, then I wouldn't be in the business. This is not new by the way, this has been going on for quite a while, and every now and then there's a revolt of principle, if you will. Mick O'Regan: And yet those revolts of principle would seem more and more to be the sort of flailing around of people in a hopeless situation. From what you've said, and I acknowledge, this has been going on for at least two decades. Lowell Bergman: You would agree, for instance I think, and people in Australia who backed the Vietnam War during the '60s would agree that they weren't getting all the correct information about really what was going on in Vietnam, and that's why they backed the war. At a certain point, the level of information came through that in fact there might be something wrong with this policy and this strategy, so people demanded other information, or found it themselves. So I think that that's the kind of situation that we're in. Until the information people are getting appears to be in their real lives non-functional, there won't be a growing demand for an alternative. Mick O'Regan: Continuing my conversation with the American journalist, I asked him if he thought TV current affairs was too focused on entertainment, rather than information. Lowell Bergman: It depends on what you mean by entertainment. There's no reason why a serious program can't be in a sense entertaining, and keep people's attention. It's the form that Sixty Minutes developed for instance, to figure out a way of having the stars tell the story, that allowed people to sit there and in a sense, be entertained, if you will, and occasionally actually get some real information. The problem is when the form takes over completely from the information and when there's outright self-censorship. That's the difficulty. I'm not so personally opposed to having entertaining news presentations, it doesn't have to all sound like the BBC and be very serious all the time. Mick O'Regan: It's such a fine balance isn't it? I mean in the end you're making that star into the repository of that public information when in fact that may not be the case. Lowell Bergman: Well when the star becomes so entrenched in the system that they're unwilling to take risks, then that's a problem. Mick O'Regan: And how do you encourage the star to take risks? Lowell Bergman: By telling them their job depends on it. Remember, there was no golden age of broadcasting in terms of the news, there have always been ups and downs. As Mr Fowler, the Head of the FCC in 1982, under Ronald Reagan said, 'A television set's just a box with pictures'. That's the problem, when you have that perspective on what is a publicly owned means of distribution, without which they couldn't do it, and they are not held to any standard to operate other than in their own pecuniary interests as a corporation or as individuals, then the behaviour is going to be short term, and not in the general interest. Mick O'Regan: What would have to happen for the sort of television reporting that you would like to see and like to be part of, to grow? What's the solution, in a sense? Lowell Bergman: Well I don't know that I have a solution, but let me back up for a minute on terms and words. It's not investigative reporting in my view, it's reporting on news in general needs to be in depth, could be entertaining, and it's important for all of us to be as informed as possible and not to be, if you will, panicked or fed a lot of pabulum that makes us patriotic without understanding what we're doing. That's the biggest problem that we face right now, is that there's very little in-depth understanding by the general population. For instance in the United States, the polls were showing I think it's 60% to 70% of the American public believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11. No-one's said that, they implied it, politicians did, and others, but that was the conclusion that people drew. It was sort of a logical conclusion, if we're going to invade the country and hunt the guy down and try to kill him, that must be what he was connected to. But in fact it wasn't true, and you didn't hear people for example in the networks, getting on television or otherwise, or doing stories, saying 'That's not true and here's why it's not true', you didn't hear politicians trying to correct the record, Republican or Democrat, in the United States. They just let it go. And so that's the danger that we're in, and that we will make decisions that politicians will say are popularly made, without really having an informed public. Now is that such a dire situation? I don't think it's so different than many other situations that we've lived through already and to some extent prospered, at least in the United States. Can it be changed? Probably it will change and the pendulum will swing, but I think it's going to be up to younger people to take some risks and do some things that those of us who are closer to the end than the beginning tried to at one time, and are getting a little tired. And we're overpaid, you know, when you get older they pay you more. So what I've noticed is that for less money you can get a lot of young people to do what you could do probably better and cheaper. Mick O'Regan: Lowell Bergman, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it and I've enjoyed speaking with you. Lowell Bergman: Thank you. Mick O'Regan: TV producer, New York Times columnist, and lecturer in journalism at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, Lowell Bergman. And he told me off air that his next project is a documentary series to be hosted by none other than Homer Simpson. Should be interesting. Mick O'Regan: And that's the program for this week. My thanks to the production team of The Media Report, David Shankey and Peter MacMurray. Guests on this program: Peter Meakin Director of News and Current Affairs at the Seven Network Lowell Bergman Former producer for Sixty Minutes in the United States and currently frequent contributor to the New York Times. Presenter: Mick O'Regan Producer: David Shankey © 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation |