Not Necessarily the News? : Newscasters Say ‘WIOU’ Distorts the Image of TV Journalism

“WIOU’s” vision of local TV news is preposterous, a caricature, a distortion. At least, that’s what many people who work in television news in Los Angeles are saying about CBS’ new drama about the inner workings of a TV newsroom.

“A lot of people were saying it would do for TV news what ‘L.A. Law’ and ‘St. Elsewhere’ did for the legal and medical professions,” said Ernest Arboles, producer of KCBS Channel 2’s 6 p.m. newscast. “But I think it fell far short of that. The characters are all so one-dimensional, so trite.”

“There is a grain of truth in there, but they take it several steps beyond what’s real,” said Jerry Matthews, a news producer at KABC-TV Channel 7. “It’s very distorted.

“Like the anchorman who is a lech,” he said, referring to a scene in the first episode Oct. 24 in which the anchor (Harris Yulin) put his hand on the thigh of the woman (Helen Shaver) reporting the news next to him during the broadcast. “I have worked with anchors who have had a leaning in that direction, but they would never grope somebody on the air.”

“It’s a caricature of all that is bad and evil about TV news,” said KABC anchor Harold Greene. “These anchorwomen today would slap your face right off if anyone did anything like that.”

“Paddy Chayefsky and ‘Network’ this ain’t,” said Warren Cereghino, news director at KTLA Channel 5. “They rose to a new high in bad taste by showing the transvestite in the men’s room (in the second episode).”

Nearly all of those questioned about the show said that “WIOU” is riddled with inaccuracies and distortions. The show’s producers, both of whom worked at local TV stations, stand by the accuracy of their portrayal of the TV newsroom. (See story, Page 9.)

But George de Anton, a videotape editor at Channel 2, said that “WIOU” is almost the equivalent of comparing “Police Academy” to real police department work.

“That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but you watch this thing and you just want to scream, ‘Come on, that doesn’t happen,’ ” De Anton said. “But you are hoping that the people watching know that you are not like that. ‘Murphy Brown’ is a sitcom. You can laugh at it because you know it’s supposed to be making fun of the business. But this show is borderline real. It throws a dark cloud over our industry.”

De Anton objected to the portrayal of cameramen who rolled up to a fire and stood around like buffoons waiting for an intern to tell them what to shoot. In reality, he said, cameramen jump out with their cameras rolling.

Others objected to reporters who ignored blatant conflict of interests.

In the first episode, one reporter investigated a story that concerned her closest friends. In the second installment, another reporter acted as a go-between for a young burn victim--who supposedly risked his life to save his girlfriend from a burning building--and the movie company that wanted to buy the rights to his story. For serving as the “guardian of his life story,” the reporter asked the hero to sign over to him a percentage of the gross. When the news director discovered this impropriety, he reprimanded him with a lame tongue-lashing.

“I’m trying to separate this as entertainment and not a true portrayal of my business, but that did begin to disturb me,” said Sylvia Teague, managing editor at KCAL Channel 9. “It really portrayed us as being vultures on people who are in pain and helpless.”

“Maybe there are people who are that sleazy, but I would have suspended him immediately and very likely would fire him,” Cereghino said. “And I think all of my colleagues in this town would do the same thing.”

Hans Laetz, an assignment editor at KCBS, said that he was somewhat insulted that the show would portray his profession so flippantly. Reporters are ego-driven, he said, but not completely heartless, not without ethics, not without a real sense of mission to report the news.

“It shows everything in television except the moral compass that is always there,” Laetz said. “What they miss is that we all are in this business because we love news and because we love television. I wish they would be more accurate.”

On the other hand, some TV journalists pointed out, it may be asking too much to expect any more realism from “WIOU” than one gets from, say, “Hunter” or “The Cosby Show.”

“I guess it’s as true to life as a cop show is true to the police officers who go out there,” said KTTV Channel 11 anchor Patti Suarez. “It’s a skeleton of our business. I don’t think that it’s particularly true to life, but then again, what is? It’s a television show.”

The producers of “WIOU,” she said, simply seem to be using the TV newsroom setting to portray the ordinary conflicts and dramas that go on between human beings because “TV news is hot right now.”

While much of what they depict is false and outrageous, some of the particulars of the program are on the money, she said.

The woman executive producer (Mariette Hartley) who keeps getting passed over for promotion to the news director job in favor of men is an issue in the TV news business and in many other businesses, Suarez said. And the struggle of the news director (John Shea) between reporting the news and going for ratings, she added, is another constant TV news dilemma that the show is attempting to explore.

Suarez also liked the bit in the first episode when the news director told a producer to wear her hair back when she went on the air to read a news update. “Things like that do happen. I once worked at a station where they had a tie-tying seminar so all the men would know how to tie their ties. And if someone’s tie was off center, it meant three days off without pay for the producer who let that on the air.”

KTLA’s Cereghino said that the romantic entanglement between Shaver’s anchor character and Shea’s news director is symptomatic of a growing concern in the TV news business. The magazine published by the Radio and Television News Directors Assn. recently ran a long article on the subject of complications that arise when a news boss has an affair with one of his anchors, he said.

While he wishes the show were more accurate, Cereghino said that he realizes it is simply entertainment and that, as entertainment, “WIOU” has the right to portray the news business however it sees fit. “Maybe the truth is just not that interesting and they feel they have to dress it up,” he said.

But will this depiction of the TV news business taint the public’s perception of their favorite TV newscasters?

The reviews are mixed.

“When I am out in public, nobody ever asks me whether shows like ‘Murphy Brown’ or (movies such as) ‘Broadcast News’ are really like our news,” said KTLA anchor Larry McCormick. “They ask me what my colleagues are really like. They ask me interesting things about what it takes to put together a broadcast. But they don’t make a connection between play TV news and real television news. I think we underestimate the intelligence of the viewer. None of this bothers me.”

It does others.

“Most of us are in here trying to do a credible job,” said KABC producer Matthews. “We really care about news and how we present it. When you see a show where reporters are put in obvious conflict-of-interest situations or the anchor is groping someone on the air, things that would never happen--that bothers me. If the public believes any of that, it could hurt our credibility.”