{"id":90831,"date":"2006-04-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2006\/04\/24\/charles-gibsons-paul-white-award-speech\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:16:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:16:33","slug":"charles-gibsons-paul-white-award-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2006\/04\/24\/charles-gibsons-paul-white-award-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Gibson\u2019s Paul White Award Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gibson, host of ABC’s Good Morning America, gave this speech at the RTNDA convention in Las Vegas upon receiving the Paul White Award on April 24, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

I am truly honored, and considerably humbled, to receive this Paul White Award, coming as it does from an organization that I respect, and which represents a group of people whom I believe are so critical to the national discourse.<\/p>\n\n

Just a personal note: My philosophy of life, to the extent I have one, is that we spend our lives trying to prove to our parents that we\u2019re worth a damn. Both my mom and dad were news junkies. Dad and I watched Huntley-Brinkley together every night. Dinner table conversation was the front page of the Washington Post. When it came time to consider a career as I approached college graduation, I went to the college library and got out the Broadcasting Yearbook. Listed were the names of the correspondents from the three networks. I remember there were approximately 45 from NBC, 40 from CBS, 35 from ABC. It occurred to me I was going to spend my life trying to get one in a universe of only 120 jobs. But it was my dream.<\/p>\n\n

Beyond dreaming was that I\u2019d get to work with the extraordinary people I\u2019ve known at ABC. News broadcasting is a collaborative effort, and if a man is truly known by the company he keeps, then I stand in good stead. We all grumble, we gripe, but all of us, I suspect, love this business to the core of our being. And we are blessed to work in it.<\/p>\n\n

Also way beyond dreaming was that I would some day be given an award like this one. I am grateful.<\/p>\n\n

Now, lest I get a swelled head, I am conscious of a few things.<\/p>\n\n

First, that you\u2019re giving this award to someone who has a kitchen on the set of his broadcast. Paul White may be turning over in his grave.<\/p>\n\n

Second, in the \u201cdon\u2019t get too puffed up, buddy\u201d category. When I went on the Internet to check the list of past winners, there was my name and picture right at the top. \u201cThe winner of the 2006 Paul White Award..\u201d And then right under that it said, \u201cClick if you want to read more about Osgood\u2019s life and career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The day after Barbara Cochran called me to tell me I was being given this award, I went to the movies. \u201cGood Night,and Good Luck.\u201d A movie built around a speech made by Edward R. Murrow to this very organization. I sat there thinking, \u201cOh great, they\u2019re going to expect me to give a talk that will inspire a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Would that I were capable of doing such.<\/p>\n\n

Speeches from this podium in past years \u2015and I went back and read many \u2015have tended \u2015in quite general terms \u2015to scold our industry, lament slackened standards, or even suggest our industry\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n\n

In some cases, among them the Murrow speech, they have been a call to arms for our industry.<\/p>\n\n

I, however, am going to try and talk to you in far more practical, direct and nitty-gritty terms.<\/p>\n\n

The average tenure in your jobs \u2014the average tenure of a news director at a local television station \u2014is about two years. Two years!<\/p>\n\n

I want to change that. I want you to be able to set down roots in your community. Put your kids in school and be confident they can graduate high school in that same city.<\/p>\n\n

What I want to say to you tonight \u2015and here\u2019s the topic sentence \u2015is that what you do is important. Truly important. All too often, I fear, that very basic point gets lost.<\/p>\n\n

More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source. You\u2019ve heard that. But in truth, more Americans get their news from local newscasts than from any other source. More Americans get their news from you, than from any other source.<\/p>\n\n

Pew Research tells me that 59 percent of people in this country say they regularly turn to local newscasts. That\u2019s a higher percentage than say they read newspapers, watch cable or network news.<\/p>\n\n

Tip O\u2019Neill\u2026perhaps the most colorful character I ever covered\u2026used to say all politics is local. Well\u2026the most important news is local.<\/p>\n\n

What truly matters to people are their local schools\u2026garbage collection\u2026road repair\u2026water quality\u2026hometown healthcare. Those things are much more important to people than our regular fare on Good Morning America or World News Tonight.<\/p>\n\n

So why don\u2019t you cover those things? Why do you lead night after night with crime and fire? You do, you know \u2015and in a moment I\u2019m going to tell you how often you do \u2015and I suspect it will embarrass you. You think that\u2019s what gets you ratings. But I can tell you right now \u2015with some pretty powerful evidence to back me up \u2015that you\u2019re wrong. And if you do cover those things I mentioned, the things that are truly important to a community and to your viewers, you\u2019ll be in your jobs longer than two years.<\/p>\n\n

I know you all love the minute-by-minutes. They\u2019re like news director crack. Seductive and addictive. But the reputation and eventually the ratings of your newscasts don\u2019t depend on a minute.<\/p>\n\n

They depend on the weeks\u2026and the months\u2026and the years of good solid civic coverage of your city.<\/p>\n\n

More Americans get their news from local newscasts than from any other source. And that makes what you do important.<\/p>\n\n

Many of you ABC news directors have passed through GMA\u2019s Times Square Studios over the last seven years. I like to ask about your news department. Every single answer almost without exception has started with the words, \u201cWell, in our last book\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n

No. No-no.<\/p>\n\n

Tell me how your department is regarded in the city. Tell me about your reporters and your anchors. If you must tell me about ratings, tell me about cumulative ratings for the past three years.<\/p>\n\n

As a wise old boss of mine used to say, \u201cIf you live by the book, you\u2019ll die by the book.\u201d And I would add that the book is fickle.<\/p>\n\n

Let me start with questions.<\/p>\n\n

Why do you cede so much control of your broadcast to consultants? If you are as smart as I think you are, and if you\u2019re truly worthy of promotion to a job as important as being a news director, why do you let someone else tell you what to do?<\/p>\n\n

Modern politicians have come to rely on consultants, and look what we\u2019re getting. Politicians have been homogenized and don\u2019t ever tell you what they really think. The consultants feed them a steady diet of polls. If all they do is follow what the polls tell them constituents are thinking, they\u2019re not leaders, they\u2019re followers.<\/p>\n\n

Well, news directors who rely on consultants wind up producing newscasts that look like every other newscast around, and if they read the minute-by-minutes and program merely what they think people want to watch, and what the consultants tell them works in other cities, they\u2019re not directing anything, they\u2019re being directed.<\/p>\n\n

Why do you hire anchors whose previous station (which may have been 10 states away) happened to have ratings that went up a few points \u201cin the last book?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Why don\u2019t you promote your best reporter who happens to know your city like the back of his or her hand?<\/p>\n\n

One of the best local anchors I ever saw owned his town of Buffalo for 25 years. He was born in Buffalo. He reported on Buffalo. Then he anchored in Buffalo. But if you lined him up with 99 other guys and said, \u201cOne of these guys is a TV anchor,\u201d you\u2019d probably have picked him last.<\/p>\n\n

Instead what I see are anchors who come to town looking like they\u2019ve come out of a cookie cutter and it appears as if they have to be told how to pronounce the names of your suburbs.<\/p>\n\n

How many reporters do you have who have the trust and thus the phone numbers of your local city councilmen? How many reporters do you have who can pick up the phone and get through to the local business leaders who really know what\u2019s going on economically in your city? Who on your staff really knows the school board\u2019s master plan for the next five years?<\/p>\n\n

How many of you hire reporters by looking at tapes? Please, I beg you, if you\u2019ve got a reporter\u2019s job open, ask applicants to send you a list of the stories they\u2019re most proud of, then look at how they wrote those stories. Pick out the best three candidates. And, THEN, and not until then, look at their tapes.<\/p>\n\n

How many of you run promos about the reportorial strengths of your news department, as opposed to promoting the friendliness and compatibility of your anchors or the number of your microwave vans?<\/p>\n\n

The audience is smart, smarter than we are in many respects. They watch, and they really hear. They\u2019re intuitive.<\/p>\n\n

Tell them night after night you\u2019ve got a story they can\u2019t afford to miss, and they\u2019ll know they can miss it. Use the words \u201cshocking or \u201cexplosive,\u201d \u201cterrifying\u201d or \u201cscandalous\u201d night after night, and those words will become white noise. Is has already happened to \u201cexclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

And don\u2019t insult them during sweeps. They know stories on iced teas that kill aren\u2019t truly worth their time.<\/p>\n\n

I don\u2019t want to sound overly negative here.<\/p>\n\n

We had a transit strike in New York City a couple of months ago. I watched four days of local news, almost non-stop. The stations, and I\u2019m pleased to say I thought WABC was in the forefront, did a spectacular job. But I could tell which reporters really knew the players \u2014the negotiators, the lawyers \u2014pretty quickly.<\/p>\n\n

New Orleans stations were nothing short of heroic during Katrina. I saw a good bit of what they got on the air in the most difficult of conditions. Same for Houston when Rita approached. Local reporters saw the futility and contradictions of the evacuation plans with greater clarity than did local officials.<\/p>\n\n

Your people are capable of some pretty terrific work.<\/p>\n\n

More Americans get their news from local newscasts than from any other source. And that makes what all of you do important.<\/p>\n\n

I fear that some of you right now are thinking, \u201cGibson is just one of those ivory tower network types who doesn\u2019t have a clue about my problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI work in television or radio (you\u2019re saying to yourself) not newspapers. All my bosses care about is the last book. Pictures are the key to ratings \u2014and good looking anchors. If Gibson had my job he\u2019d be third in the market before he found the bathroom and he wouldn\u2019t even get two years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Well, I want to tell you about a book that I just read in galley form that\u2019s coming out this fall. It\u2019s called \u201cWe Interrupt This Newscast\u201d and it\u2019s put together by the Committee of Concerned Journalists from information compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.<\/p>\n\n

It is a project that grew out of this very convention nine years ago.<\/p>\n\n

They conducted the most extensive study ever undertaken of local television news.<\/p>\n\n

From 1998 to 2002 \u2014five years \u2014they watched, catalogued and analyzed the content of more than 2,400 newscasts from 154 stations in more than 50 markets large and small.<\/p>\n\n

Then they compared the story analysis with those minute-by-minutes you all love, and correlated that with overall ratings. They adjusted for popularity of lead-in and pre-existing ratings strength of the station<\/p>\n\n

Even the authors seemed a bit surprised by their results.<\/p>\n\n

Let me quote just a couple: \u201cWe prove that many of the best known bits of conventional wisdom are demonstrably false,\u201d including \u201cthe idea that it is more important to hook and hold an audience than to cultivate one.\u201d In other words, no more \u201cif it bleeds, it leads.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Further quoting: \u201cNewscasts that exhibited high-quality television journalism (and I would inject here that they have a rigorous definition of what constitutes quality) have higher ratings, higher share numbers and more attractive demographics than stations that produce lower-quality newscasts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

One-by-one they debunk the consultant myths by which, I suspect, many of your producers format their newscasts.<\/p>\n\n

Examples: of the 2,400 newscasts they analyzed, 61 percent, almost two thirds, led with a crime, accident or disaster story. 61 percent. In half of those programs that led with crime, accident or disaster, the first three stories were all from those categories.<\/p>\n\n

Government or politics led just one in 12 programs. Education once in every 41 broadcasts. Health once in every 67 newscasts.<\/p>\n\n

Crime stories \u2014and the authors of this study analyzed 8,000 crime stories \u2014were watched by almost a tenth-of-a-rating point fewer viewers in the prime demographic than stories on other topics. Of the 4,300 stories that dealt with ideas, issues and policy? A tenth of a rating point higher.<\/p>\n\n

Lead stories on health, political malfeasance or local economics all did a better job of holding the lead-in than crime, accident or disaster.<\/p>\n\n

Bottom line, the data indicates that so-called \u201cnewspaper stories,\u201d if covered well and when well-written, actually attract and hold viewers better than crime etc.<\/p>\n\n

The book again is \u201cWe Interrupt This Newscast.\u201d It will be published this fall by Cambridge University Press. Get it. Read it. And maybe, most important, buy a copy for your boss.<\/p>\n\n

I do realize that the overall audience for our product is getting smaller. Newspapers face the problem. Networks face the problem. Your stations face the problem. We\u2019ve all got to find new ways to deliver our product to a technically ever-more-savvy audience. Investing in these new technologies is, I\u2019m sure, yet another drain on your newsgathering resources. We\u2019ll all probably head up some blind alleys and make some false starts. But I believe that what I have been talking about this evening are ways you can do better vis-\u00e0-vis your competition \u2014putting on the news broadcasts that I know in your heart you want to put on.<\/p>\n\n

As for the new means of delivery we\u2019ve got to find, I\u2019ll let future winners of this award, who will no doubt be more technically proficient than I, talk about them in similar speeches in years to come.<\/p>\n\n

I just want to say that the appetite for news \u2014for information, good information \u2014will not diminish. We need to get that information to the audience. Educate them. Get them to think. Be the first draft of history in your town, not just the police and fire blotter. Set the public agenda. Be a real factor in your community. Recognize that you are a vital force for good in our democracy.<\/p>\n\n

More Americans get their news from local newscasts than from any other source. And that\u2019s why what you do \u2014 you ladies and gentlemen who are news directors \u2014i s so very, very important.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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