Fall 2020 JOU 2312 22nd Class November 5, 2020

1. JOU 2312
REPORTING AND WRITING
FOR TV AND RADIO
Professor Michael Rizzo
Director, Journalism Program
Division of Mass Communication
Collins College of Professional Studies
Presentation for November 5, 2020

2. LAST CLASS – NOVEMBER 2
NEWS CONFERENCES
ETHICS
JOU 2312
REPORTING AND WRITING
FOR TV AND RADIO

3. TODAY
MORE ON ETHICS
WORK ON SHERRELL WHITMIRE STORY
JOU 2312
REPORTING AND WRITING
FOR TV AND RADIO

4. RECAP
FOCUS ON THE MOST NEWSWORTHY
COMMENT MADE AT NEWS
CONFERENCES
BROADCAST JOURNALISTS CAN’T FOCUS
JUST ON RATINGS FOR STORIES
RTDNA CODE OF ETHICS: TRUTH AND
ACCURACY ABOVE ALL, INDEPENDENCE
AND TRNSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY
FOR CONSEQUENCES

5. MORE GRADING HAS BEEN
COMPLETED
CHECK FOR ANY MISSING WORK
AND CONTACT ME TO DISCUSS IT

6. SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
CLAUSES
CHECKING YOUR WORK –
MISSPELLINGS
INCORRECT FACTS
LONG, CONFUSING SENTENCES
CLICHES INSTEAD OF FACTS

9. WHERE DID WE SEE AND HEAR
GOOD JOURNALISM ETHICS ON
ELECTION NIGHT?

10. WHERE DID GOOD JOURNALISM
ETHICS FALTER ON ELECTION NIGHT?

11. [MSNBC’s] Nicolle Wallace and Joy Reid giggled
and
chatted about “meditation apps” while telling
each
other, “You breathe in, you breathe out …”
Remember when folks like David Brinkley and
Walter
Cronkite were renowned for their ability to
maintain
their composure? The day President John F.

12. In the most unprecedented of election years,
networks preached admirable caution about
voting
results. But some still couldn't resist parsing
tea
leaves too small for helpful analysis and
injecting
too much horse-race hype, down to the ever-
present countdown clocks and the magic,

13. Although TV journalists have been warning
viewers
for weeks that it might take days or longer to
determine a winner, they weren’t always taking
their own advice on election night. As
President
Trump performed well in a number of states
based
on Election Day turnout, as predicted, some
networks created the early impression that the
results were more definitive, not Tuesday’s
eventual cliffhanger.

14. Networks added to the confusion by not clearly
delineating how different states were tallying
ballots cast in multiple ways, although the
pandemic-year election made it exceptionally
difficult to explain.

15. Despite all the warnings about drawn-out results,
some anchors fell into their old bad habits,
making
broad generalizations from too-small samples.
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was shooting out a
barrage of
voting totals, some less significant than others.
His
colleague, John King, cautioned “we have a
long
way to go,” even as he meticulously detailed
lead
changes in battleground states.

16. The information mix – too few votes tallied, but
an excess of voter-polling data – risks
confusing
viewers. ABC trumpeted early Ohio vote totals
favoring Biden, but also exit polls that appeared
to
lean toward Trump.

19. As I write Wednesday, the three major cable networks
continue
to cover the no-news of the protracted count. But instead
of
honestly conceding that there’s not much to report and
won’t
be for hours or even longer, they’re attempted to sustain
a
permanent state of excitement, fluffing their viewers with
fancy finger-work on their big boards, zooming in to
individual

20. If you’re watching more than 20 minutes of election
coverage at a time for a tight race, you’re doing it
wrong because there is only so much journalistic
massaging TV producers can do to a limited
amount
of information to make it look fresh. The same
applies, of course, to most natural disaster
coverage,
riot reportage, terrorist attack dispatches,
invasion
communiques and other rolling news bulletins
that
grow elastic and meandering. Such is the magic
of

21. Even with the results of the presidential contest
still
out, there’s a clear loser in this election:
polling.
Surveys badly missed the results, predicting an
easy
win for former Vice President Joe Biden, a
Democratic pickup in the Senate, and gains
for the
party in the House. Instead, the presidential
election is still too close to call, Republicans

22. Before Election Day, the ABC-Washington Post poll
gave
Biden a whopping 17-point lead in Wisconsin; on
Wednesday, his lead was 0.6 percent. “That’s not
a
mistake. That’s not an error,” noted pollster Frank
Luntz. “That’s polling malpractice, and you have
to go
to tremendous lengths to be able to get
something

24. King’s coverage, though it arguably did not
provide
the specificity with which some viewers were
hoping to assess vote counts, was nonetheless
measured. He frequently asked for viewers’
patience, telling them there was still much they
didn’t know, even as the votes streamed in. And
CNN, holding true to its word, was reluctant to
call
any states until it was virtually certain the races
there were over.

25. FOR MONDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2020
PRODUCE YOUR WHITMIRE PKG WITH
VIDEO/VISUALS AND YOUR VOICE
TRACK.

26. STAY WELL
AND
STAY SAFE