CNN and CBS Radio Show the Way

I would like to comment on the article/speech “Too Much Dessert?” (Calendar, Jan. 7) in which “Frontline” senior producer Michael Sullivan decries the lack of substance in the delivery of news.

Of course, he is absolutely right when he pinpoints the start of the decline of American electronic and print journalism. One has to include print because as the papers had to fight the revenue incursions of TV, they too had to aim lower and rely as well on focus groups and demographic studies.

After almost 40 years in the business of electronic journalism (network news writer/producer, news director, reporter, critic--most recently with the so-far ratings ill-fated KCOP), I believe that the managements--and, as a result, the American audiences--were bamboozled and victimized, by psycho-sociologists who created demographic myths about what the public wants to know. The same for “focus groups.” The same for broadcast news consultants (who, in many cases, seemed to be failed news directors from Des Moines with the chutzpah to charge high fees for bringing their small-town techniques to the gullible managements--who, in turn, are often made up of ex-salespeople).

All but forgotten is the basic journalistic concept that news is what is most important to the most people--and yes, you can sugarcoat it a little with end-of-the-cast kickers about a pig that swims or comments on the budget debate from a New York cabby. But to repeatedly lead newscasts in Southern California with drive-by shootings, freeway chases and the abduction of a child by his biological father does nothing to enhance the reputation of California broadcast news, which never did have much of a good name, back East, at headquarters.

All this is magnified by the fact that the newsrooms are staffed (and I suppose the reasons are economic) by young, inexperienced, undereducated, under-traveled, under-sophisticated, straight-out-of-Journalism 111 classes men and women, who write the news the Ken & Barbie anchors read and who, as “producers,” supervise the assigning, writing, shooting and editing of news stories. They, in turn, are supervised by a management, itself often devoid of higher education, journalistic experience and sophistication. But they do know sales!

Finally, the breakdown in California’s once-No. 1 educational system, has made the audiences dependent on fluffy, sensationalistic, Hollywood-oriented, violent, kitschy, newest-cancer “cure,” melodramatic news as just another form of “Too Much Dessert” entertainment.

Hopefully there are more Michael Sullivans out there, to catch our attention regarding the real problems--and important successes!--of L.A., California, America and the world. So that these can be solved by a knowledgeable, unmanipulated electorate.

Finally, I would like to point to two electronic news sources that have begun to show us the way: CNN and the CBS Radio network. By downplaying the role of anchors and by arranging news on the basis of importance, without making it dull . . . that’s the right direction.

It’s too bad that I won’t be able to be part of that new world, the kind we dreamed of when we, the veterans, first entered that wonderful world of broadcast journalism back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Man, those were times.

And we respected ourselves.

As journalists.

As a nation.

Now?