printable versionNetwork news presidents discuss elections, Iraqi war, Internet
Executives say their divisions were cautious about interpreting election-night results this year
BY MATTHEW EARLY WRIGHT
News division presidents Andrew Heyward of CBS News, left, Neal Shapiro of NBC News, middle, and David Westin of ABC News, right, discussed media coverage of the elections as part of a panel discussion sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists.
Faced with a declining viewership due to competition from cable and Internet news outlets, the news-division presidents of ABC, CBS and NBC expressed their resolve Monday to continue serving the needs of their viewers.
“We need to look at where technology is taking us,” said NBC News President Neal Shapiro. “But for now, a good amount of Americans still depend on free television to get their news, and we have to serve that need.”
The event, “Network News and Presidential Elections,” was sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists. Questions from the audience followed the panel discussion, which took place in Cubberley Auditorium.
In addition to the effects of cable and the Internet on network-audience numbers, the panelists also discussed exit polling, interpreting election results, covering conventions and assessing the relationship between politicians and the press.
David Westin, president of ABC News, recognized the need to adapt to the changing landscape of modern media. “It’s clear the audience wants us to come to them, not them to us,” he said. “We need to figure out ways we can reach the audience through new technology, which presents opportunities as well as challenges.”
Richard Wald, professor of media and society at Columbia University, moderated the discussion. He said that during election week, nine of the 10 highest rated cable shows were election coverage. For the networks, not one of the most-watched shows dealt with the election.
For Westin, covering an election is a public service networks are obligated to provide for their viewers. If the goal were to maximize ratings and profit, networks would never cover an election, he said.
Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, looked at the issue in a different context. “Seventeen million people watched Election Night on cable, but 40 million watched on the networks,” he said. “That’s very good for cable, but it’s still less than one in three.”
All three network executives spoke about the relative caution they exercised in interpreting election results this year. During the 2000 election, the networks made many predictions that Heyward compared to “calling the game at halftime.”
Wald described the phenomenon using an analogy of “a child who burns their hand on a stove” and learns to proceed with caution next time.
“We make no apologies for taking our time to get it right this time,” Shapiro added.
Heyward agreed, saying even the language all three networks used was more circumspect. Each network took a different approach to its coverage, which provided viewers with different perspectives, he said.
But Wald pressed them on the controversial use of exit poll data. “The exit polls got it wrong, right?” he said.
Heyward rephrased Wald’s statement, saying, “The exit polls skewed more heavily Democratic than the popular vote, yes.”
Westin said the exit polls are a useful tool, but only if they are interpreted correctly. “It’s not fair to say the exit polls are wrong,” he said. “Any exit poll is not accurate because it’s not the same as the election. It’s a sample.”
Wald asked the panelists why the networks devoted relatively little airtime to covering the Democratic and Republican conventions.
“I would argue that the conventions have become increasingly non-newsworthy,” Heyward responded. “We all covered the speeches by the principal candidates and other key players, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see even less coverage.”
Shapiro said that cable coverage of the conventions was more exhaustive because it included details only important or interesting to insiders and “political junkies.”
The panelists all agreed that cable news is affecting viewers’ choices largely because of the way it cover events. The blend of news and opinion offered on Fox News was repeatedly invoked as a prime example of this. Shapiro gave Fox credit for “changing the game.”
Westin, however, cautioned that a clear line needs to be drawn. “Opinion is fine, but it needs to be clearly identified,” he said. “When opinion starts to push out truth telling, it undermines our core mission.”
During the question-and-answer session, members of the audience asked about a range of topics, from coverage of the war in Iraq to the political satire of Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
“Simply stated, we let down the American people on the weapons of mass destruction,” Westin said, addressing the networks’ failure to scrutinize claims from the Bush administration that Iraq had such weapons. “We did not ask tough enough questions; we were not skeptical enough, and I sincerely regret that.”
Responding to the political satire question, Heyward said that people like Stewart are only able to do what they do because networks cover the news first. “It’s healthy to have satire and parody,” he said. “But if that’s all we had, there would be nothing to make fun of.”
Shapiro is confident network news will remain relevant as the climate of journalism shifts toward Internet media. “That magic combination of words and pictures can take you someplace and let you experience something,” he said. “That’s what television news can do, and there will always be a market for that.”
Matthew Early Wright is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.