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Broadcasters Face Tough Choice

T

TheBigA

This was a pretty good article from the Buffalo News about the tough choices stations have to make when airing the daily press briefings by a president who is also running for office:

https://buffalonews.com/2020/04/15/l...s-conferences/

This is primarily a TV article, but it also applies to radio.

Local television stations are facing criticism about their decisions regarding President Donald Trump's often lengthy evening press conferences -- whether they choose to broadcast them or not. Some viewers say stations have an obligation to show leaders' addresses during a time of crisis, while others argue that the president is abusing press events by using them to promote his reelection effort.
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Karl Rove has observed that there really isn't a moment when he isn't thinking about re-election. Everything he does is couched in that context. So he may be reading a prepared statement that on the surface appears pretty fair, but he often diverges from the script. That's when certain signals come out.

Public station KUOW in Seattle faced a lot of criticism when it announced it would no longer carry the briefings live.

So what are stations supposed to do?
 
TheBigA said:
This was a pretty good article from the Buffalo News about the tough choices stations have to make when airing the daily press briefings by a president who is also running for office:

https://buffalonews.com/2020/04/15/l...s-conferences/

This is primarily a TV article, but it also applies to radio.



Karl Rove has observed that there really isn't a moment when he isn't thinking about re-election. Everything he does is couched in that context. So he may be reading a prepared statement that on the surface appears pretty fair, but he often diverges from the script. That's when certain signals come out.

Public station KUOW in Seattle faced a lot of criticism when it announced it would no longer carry the briefings live.

So what are stations supposed to do?
Click to expand...

I think it's left to the local news directors to decide which press conferences to pay attention to. In DMA's where a state capital's are located such as Sacramento, Albany, Austin, and Tallahassee they will focus more on the Governor's press conferences though. In larger cities like San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego and Los Angeles they will focus on the county leaders, and mayors responses to COVID-19 plans.

I seen Mayor Garcetti's speech with LA County Officials having their press conference at the 4:30-5pm timeframe though in California.


At this point the outlets that are really paying attention to the White House response are on Cable News/talk channels though.
 
RadioPatrol said:
At this point the outlets that are really paying attention to the White House response are on Cable News/talk channels though.
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It depends...this article is about Buffalo, that has a strong conservative base. Some there are more interested in the president than the governor.

We're talking about something that is both emergency information and a TV show. Hard to draw the line between the two.
 
Just air the important clips later in the day, No need to air a 4 hour press conference that is mostly rambling.
 
Don CT said:
Just air the important clips later in the day, No need to air a 4 hour press conference that is mostly rambling.
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Yes its easier if you are a ND of a local TV News affiliate to air important clips from the White House though. However if you are a National Cable News or National Internet only TV/Radio News outlet then thats harder to just pre-empt the White House response though.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Yes its easier if you are a ND of a local TV News affiliate to air important clips from the White House though. However if you are a National Cable News or National Internet only TV/Radio News outlet then thats harder to just pre-empt the White House response though.
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It's not hard to preempt it, just air it after with the crap edited out. Just air the actual news related topics of the press conference.
 
Don CT said:
It's not hard to preempt it, just air it after with the crap edited out. Just air the actual news related topics of the press conference.
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Unfortunately, it's all mixed in. He will go from reading a prepared text to giving his own personal opinion in mid sentence.
 
From a pure viewer point of view this president has lied and bullied so much I automatically hit the channel switch when his face appears. I wish our broadcasters would do the same. The reporters attending his so-called 'briefings' could report the important content in just a few sentences (which some often do anyway).
 
Don CT said:
It's not hard to preempt it, just air it after with the crap edited out. Just air the actual news related topics of the press conference.
Click to expand...


Like what I said its easier to pre-empt the White House Press Conference when you are the News Director of a local News outlet such as Nexstar, Tegna, Sinclair, Meredith, Hearst, PBS affiliates, Allen Media Group, Cox, News Press Gazette, Hearst, Gray, Scripps and the Network O&O's. You can just go straight to the Governors and Mayors response to COVID-19 in full and just get cuts from the White House.

But if you are program director at the cable news/talk channels you don't get that option due to audience reasons such as the viewer is more involved in politics than the rest of the public.
 
The good news was they skipped the white house briefings over the weekend. Great idea. All they've done is feed the vultures. But if they ever return, here's an interesting viewpoint from a former white house press secretary on how the media could make these better:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/26/opinions/white-house-briefings-journalists-trump-lockhart/index.html

I agree with a lot of what Joe is saying here. A lot of poorly phrased questions. A lack of experts in the room.

But the fact is that if we can live without them for two days, then we can live without them.
 
Heard an interesting statistic the other day. Prior to the WH recent press conference yesterday, there have been thirteen hours of WH Covid pressers. Of those thirteen hours, only 4.5 minutes of the President's comments have been spent sending condolences or recognizing the victims of the pandemic. 45 minutes was spent POTUS praising himself.
 
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