News on TV: New Attitudes and Old Habits

The Sept. 11 terror attacks had two concrete effects on the business of television news. One was that “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw decided that he wasn’t yet ready to give up his anchor chair as he had been contemplating, and he signed a new contract to remain as NBC’s lead anchor through 2004. The other was the appearance of the now-ubiquitous “news crawl” at the bottom of everything from the cable news networks to E! Entertainment.

The rest of the fallout from that day is much fuzzier.

The nightly newscasts of the broadcast networks now have more viewers, after years of falling ratings. News divisions gained renewed respect of corporate bosses who perhaps hadn’t been fully appreciative of the role played by units that don’t always return the highest profit margins. Extra budget money was found for the unexpected costs of war coverage, a trend that will continue for a second fiscal year, as the networks anticipate the possibility of having to cover military action in Iraq.

But the reminder of the importance that televised news can play didn’t stop one corporate owner, ABC’s Walt Disney Co., from flirting with the idea of doing away with one of the medium’s most serious news programs, the single-subject, late-night “Nightline,” when the network thought it could lure David Letterman from CBS.

As for the cable news universe, CNN decided its mission would henceforth be serious news. “I think Sept. 11 showed us that the world really matters and covering it in a straight and honest way is a good mission to have,” said Walter Isaacson, CNN News Group chairman. “It’s reinvigorated us and allowed us to follow our passion, which is journalism.”

Audiences had other ideas, however. While all cable networks have more viewers than a year ago, audiences have favored Fox News Channel, which pursues an opposite strategy; its schedule is filled with opinion-laced shows that more closely resemble talk radio. It surged into first place among cable news networks several months after the attacks and has stayed there. That prompted MSNBC to follow suit, with its own opinion-driven schedule. The attacks “re-energized cable news and carved out a new audience of people so totally into this story,” said NBC News President Neal Shapiro.

CNN, too, despite Isaacson’s high-minded ambitions, has recently veered toward more talk and high-spirited debates.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, which followed a frenzied August 2001 of shark stories and rampant speculation about the private life of Rep. Gary Condit, TV news rushed to embrace serious topics and the foreign news that had previously been shunted aside. Networks competed to see who had the most personnel and equipment in the Afghanistan region. CNN went so far as to send lengthy daily e-mails to print reporters who write about television, listing the whereabouts of every CNN correspondent in a vast swath of the Mideast and the highlights of what they had said on air during the day.

But as the attacks receded, other news crept in. The bombing in Afghanistan became the daily routine, and stories of financial scandal at Enron and elsewhere competed for air time. MSNBC cut back on reports from NBC News correspondents in the field and hired a stable of talk hosts. Cable networks filled their summer days with running reports on child kidnappings; the network morning news shows scrapped for two escaped kidnap victims as guests.

One recent Monday, a CNN anchor read a report plugging CNN’s first-place finish in a new study on media credibility in the year since the Sept. 11 attacks. Then she turned to the movie “Signs” and read e-mails from viewers weighing in on whether they believe complex patterns found in crop fields are paranormal occurrences.

On cable, in particular, “we’re seeing much more of a mix, including an obsession with less important stories,” said Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News. “To a degree, that’s reassuring, because it’s a barometer of America getting back to normal.... Obsession with unimportant things is a luxury.”

CNN’s Isaacson, testily running down an exhaustive list of one recent day’s reports from overseas, said fluffy stories are the exception. “You’ll catch us doing something at some point,” he said, but he insisted that “we’re more hard news than any other network, and we do more hard news than we did before Sept. 11.”

At the beginning of the summer, CNN executives gathered at Isaacson’s Atlanta home, he said, “and we talked very openly about whether we wanted to pursue a more opinion format or stick closer to hard news and journalism.” Journalism won out, he said.

“I think there was a very strong feeling that post-Sept. 11 we should reemphasize our core mission, which is reporting from around the world.” Although executives “worried about would it be cheaper and easier to get ratings by another approach, I don’t think anybody really argued for that,” he added.

Broadcasters, too, said the attacks helped them hone what their priorities should be. “The biggest effect is almost in the way we perceive ourselves,” said ABC News President David Westin. Before Sept. 11, “as devoted as many of us were to the news, we had a lot of questions raised in our minds about ‘what is our future, should we chase after this or that competitor,’ ” he said, and covering the attacks and the aftermath was “clarifying. One cannot be all things to all people, and the fact that someone else is doing something and succeeding doesn’t mean we have to chase after them.”

“I do think there’s been an increased seriousness and an awareness of the fact that most Americans were blindsided by 9/11,” says Ken Waters, a journalism professor at Pepperdine University. “But the media did a lousy job of explaining to people that maybe we’re the most powerful country, but not the most popular. Certainly the rise of radical Islam is a complex issue, and TV news is not the best medium to explain it.

“It can be said [TV news is] increasing coverage. My question is, so what? ... If you fly reporters in from Europe to cover news in Africa or the Middle East, or fly Tom Brokaw in with Jerusalem in the background, that’s simply entertainment.”

Ever the academic, Waters concludes: “I’d give them a C. There’s an awareness of a need, and some attempts to improve. But I think they have a ways to go.”

For networks and print journalists, the attacks brought about a realization that some stories had simply been overlooked, such as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, said NBC’s Shapiro. They also “starkly illuminated for people that the world is more interdependent than many viewers ever thought, and can have a direct, powerful influence on the lives--and deaths--of Americans who thought they were safe and secure in our borders.” He said that has made the audience “more willing to watch some stories they might have said, pre-9/11, are ‘not about me.’ ”

Still, network newscasts, too, have worked lighter features into their 22 minutes. “To the extent that news programs are a mix of the obligatory and discretionary, a year later there is more leeway for the discretionary,” Heyward said. “But at least at CBS, many more stories than a year ago are devoted to issues that come out of the terrorism attacks. The story continues to reverberate in many places, and that’s reflected in the mix.”

He argued, however, that the attacks didn’t provoke any “huge philosophical change, because I think the networks were more responsible than people gave us credit for before.” Rather, he said, covering the story “was a tremendous challenge for the networks, for all journalists, and I think we rose to the challenge. It was a reminder to everyone of what’s important ... and reminded everyone in this increasingly diverse and eclectic media landscape there is still a big place for networks.”