‘WIOU’ Creators: The Truth Hurts : Television: Producer John Eisendrath charges that ‘journalists can dish it out, but they can’t take it.’

The co-creators of “WIOU” defended their show against the attacks of local TV journalists, saying that its characters are fictional composites of people they knew when they themselves were TV journalists and that the show realistically depicts the flavor of television newsrooms.

John Eisendrath, executive producer and co-creator of the show with fellow executive producer Kathryn Pratt, worked as a producer at WBBM, the CBS affiliate in Chicago. Pratt was an on-air reporter at WBBM as well as at TV stations in Monterey, Calif., and St. Louis.

“Journalists can dish it out, but they can’t take it,” Eisendrath said. “They are the first to go after someone--partly because they know its good for ratings, but when the light is turned on them, you can really see them squirm.”

Eisendrath conceded that the show takes some artistic liberties to make points about a character or a moral dilemma, but he said both the dramatic and comedic situations it portrays are based on “issues that are natural to a local television station.”

Pratt said that she had been sexually harassed on the air just as the woman reporter was in “WIOU’s” pilot episode. She did not know if any woman anchor had ever reacted to a hand placed on her thigh by grabbing the crotch of her male partner and telling the camera, “I’ll let go when you let go,” as Helen Shaver’s character does in the show. But she said that she and her woman colleagues had always fantasized about doing just that and wondered “if you would become a legend or would you be fired. Our character is a heroine so she stands up for herself.”

Pratt added that every “WIOU” script is sent to Frank Magid Associates, one of the most influential TV news consulting firms in the country, and the show’s consultant there flags anything that would not happen. She said that obviously they sometimes “just want to have fun” to make the point. As an example, the image consultant hired to help Shaver’s tough-cookie character appear more feminine is a transvestite, making the statement that TV news is all appearances.

“Some people out there may not appreciate our sense of humor,” Pratt said.

As for the conflict of interests the show portrays, Eisendrath said that his brother is an alderman in Chicago and he has seen politicians and journalists become close friends and continue to interact on a professional level. And he said that many made-for-TV movies became movies because a journalist bought the rights to the story and then sold them to Hollywood.

As often as some in local TV might claim that “WIOU” errs on the side of parody, Eisendrath continued, the show errs on the side of making the TV journalists look good.

In the pilot, the news director decided not to report that a politician, who had turned his life around and served the public with great distinction, had raped a woman when he was a teen-ager. He said that many of these same people crying foul about the way “WIOU” portrays their profession, would have gone ahead and “nailed him” even after the politician removed himself from public life because they know it would be good for ratings.

“I’m glad that our show both piques them and piques their interest,” Eisendrath said. “There are a lot of very good things that go on in TV news and we are portraying those, too. But local TV news can also be a crass and self-serving institution. We are in sweeps month now. I just finished watching (KNBC anchor) Kelly Lange’s series on aphrodisiacs. There is a lot of entertainment that passes for news that our show can point out. And the public can make the judgement about what is appropriate.”