February 2007 National:
Haunting. That is the only way to describe the suicide of a person who is the target of unexpected and harmful attention – actual or anticipated – from the news media.
A responsible journalist has an obligation to inform the public of the truth. Regrettably, the decision to tell the whole truth in a news story can sometimes lead to serious harm to a person who is the subject of the report.
Two recent stories bring this problem to mind. After laying out the relevant details of these stories, we will offer a strategy that journalists can use to address the problem of harm when deciding which stories deserve coverage.
For several days last fall, Pittsburgh station KDKA-TV aired promos for an upcoming story about a "month-long investigation into reports of public and illegal sexual behavior" by an area Presbyterian minister. Before the story was broadcast, the subject of the story, Reverend Brent Dugan of Ben Avon, Penn., committed suicide.
Dugans's death came a day after the station canceled plans to air the report, citing concerns that the pastor was a suicide risk.
The story never aired, so the station's allegations against the pastor are unclear. The promos did not identify him by name, but showed a reporter confronting Rev. Dugan about alleged visits to an adult bookstore.
The minister wrote a final letter to his congregation before he killed himself. He apologized for his conduct, explained that he "had struggled with his sexuality all of his adult life" and revealed that he had been engaged sexually with a man for four years. The man cooperated with KDKA in setting up the bookstore meeting where evidence of his sexual liaison with the minister was recorded by the TV station.
The second story also occurred last fall, in Terrell, Texas. A North Texas prosecutor, Louis Conradt, killed himself as police closed in to arrest him on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy.
An NBC Dateline camera crew had accompanied police to Conradt's home to record his arrest. The arrest was the culmination of a sting operation, mounted by Dateline in cooperation with a self-professed Internet "vigilance committee," Perverted Justice.
The Texas sting employed Dateline's standard methods when doing these stories: a Perverted Justice volunteer, posing as a child, decoyed Conradt into an Internet chat session that was sexual in nature. Once a sufficiently incriminating electronic record was created, police officers, working with the Dateline team, swooped down on Conradt's home to arrest him and seize further evidence.
Clearly, the subjects in these stories each made his own choice to end his life. But each story also contains a set of circumstances that raise questions of journalistic culpability.
The Pittsburgh story revolves around privacy. On its face, it appears to have involved a plan to out a gay minister. The intent of the minister's lover in the story set-up can only be imagined. Further, the fact that the station planned to air the story during sweeps month is troublesome.
The Texas story involves other journalistic values, including creating news and checkbook journalism. Dateline has repeatedly set up these pedophile stings, renting houses as sting sites and paying the Perverted Justice people for help. NBC plans to air footage from its Texas sting operation in February, another sweeps month, according to the Perverted Justice website. We do not know if the network plans to mention the suicide.
As we've stated previously in this column, we believe that pedophile stings may have been initially justified in bringing public attention to the problem of sexual predation over the Internet. And subsequent stings may have been justified in alerting the public if the criminal justice system had failed to do anything about the problem.
But the practice of continually setting up and covering busts for the sake of ratings smells like entertainment and should be billed as such.
Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins, in their book "Media Ethics: Issues and Cases," offer a way of thinking about news stories that we think might help journalists make better decisions about stories that have the potential to cause harm.
They distinguish between three concepts: the public's right to know, the public's need to know and the public's want to know.
The concept of the public's right to know is associated with legal concepts including open meeting laws and public records.
The public's need to know involves information necessary in managing daily living. Patterson and Wilkins cite "…the health of financial institutions and the character of those who run them…" as one example. Citizens may not have the time or skills to dig out the information. The journalist's task is to provide the details so the audience can make sound economic or political decisions.
Finally, the public's want to know centers around information that some members of the audience may find interesting but have neither a right nor a need to know.
The authors talk about these concepts in relation to privacy, but we believe they can be applied to other situations as well.
The professional journalist weighs and balances the potential harm to the story subject when deciding whether to cover a story. Sometimes the duty to report the complete facts outweighs the potential for harm; if so, the story should be reported in full. At other times the potential for harm tips the scale in the opposite direction and the story need not, or even should not, be told. Or, it might be told in another way that minimizes harm.
Full disclosure is more likely to be morally justifiable, despite potential or actual harm to the subject, if the story is one that the public has a right or need to know. For a story that the public only wants to know, there is less moral support for disclosure and a stronger case to be made for restraint.
We caution journalists not to confuse money-making with the moral principles of avoiding harm or truth-telling. Making money is certainly a consideration in the journalist's professional life but it counts as an economic principle in the cases mentioned above and should not be used as moral justification for going public with a story that may cause harm.
We also urge journalists to carefully consider these issues when deciding whether and how to report a story.
Harm to a fellow human being is always a serious moral matter.
So, too, is harm to the reputation of the journalist and, by association, the reputations of others in the profession, when individuals are injured for the sake of ratings and in the absence of a compelling public interest in knowing the story in all its lurid details. ..more.. by Karen Slattery and Mark Doremus
Karen Slattery is an associate professor in the College of Communication at Marquette University. She teaches courses related to broadcast journalism, media ethics, and qualitative research methods.
Mark Doremus has a Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communication and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is now employed as a research administrator. He worked in television news for 13 years in various capacities, primarily as a news reporter-photographer. He still cares deeply about the press, in all its forms, and its practitioners. He met his wife and co-columnist, Karen Slattery, when they were both working in local television news.
Showing posts with label (.Suicides - Aired for/during Sweeps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label (.Suicides - Aired for/during Sweeps. Show all posts
Forum: Modern shame
Article Tags
(.Gotcha Stories,
(.Suicides - Aired for/during Sweeps
It sells, entertains and derails public policy. It does just about everything but serve its intended purpose of edifying and improving its subject because it is amplified into humiliation, writes DENNIS RODDY
11-12-2006 National:
Clergymen are subject to the same passions as other men; and, as far as I can see, give way to them, in one line or in another, almost as frequently. -- Anthony Trollope, "Framley Parsonage"
Trollope alludes to the Rev. Mark Robarts, whose secret shame was a desire to move up in the world, playing one rich sponsor against another. Today, Rev. Robarts would be lauded for allowing the marketplace to work its magic. The thought of the Rev. Robarts disporting abed with a he-partner would have been beyond discussion. This is not to say it would never have occurred in Victorian England; our generation did not invent nor much improve sexuality. But we seem to have invented the uses of its shame for political and commercial advancement.
Last week, in separate instances, shame and sex were put to their respective uses, all by agents less concerned with advancing public morals than in promoting themselves, their ideologies and their market shares.
In Delaware, a judge has sentenced Russell Teeter, 69, a gardener, to wear a T-shirt emblazoned, "I am a registered sex offender." He was convicted of repeatedly displaying himself to young girls.
"This is a unique way to let his customers know that he is a registered sex offender," explains Donald Roberts, the prosecutor in the case. Putting Mr. Teeter in jail, where he would be restrained from displaying himself, might also solve the problem. The T-shirt seems more an exercise in public shaming than public protection. It is likely people will now come to Mr. Teeter's shop just to have a look at the newest monkey in the zoo. Possibly, they will bring their children. Chalk one up for a sentence that seems less to solve something than to satisfy someone.
On the other side of the Great Plains, the Rev. Ted Haggard finds himself unemployed, disgraced, groveling and altogether shown up by revelations that, notwithstanding his foursquare conviction that homosexuality is a veritable finger in God's eye, he ingested both methamphetamine and the man who sold it to him, one Mike Jones, a male prostitute.
After the ritual denials, the Rev. Haggard issued a letter to his congregation about the years he struggled with a dark corner of himself only to "find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach." Presumably we are to deduce from this that he is gay, and struggled not to be. I share his torment. I have struggled for years not to be bald. Genetics has failed us both.
Until he was caught, Rev. Haggard's most controversial act was to declare an obligation for evangelical Christians to fight climate change. He viewed it as a stewardship issue, a duty to not destroy the Earth.
Had he been caught pouring used crank case oil into the storm sewers of Colorado Springs, it is hard to imagine he would have been forced to exit his ministry in shame. Hypocrisy of that sort would have little entertainment value because, at its core, our fascination with Rev. Haggard's demise has less to do with his being a hypocrite than the pure fun of watching a public man dissolve in the most humiliating of circumstances. Long ago, we had to slow down to crane our necks at the mangled wreckage encasing our neighbors. Now it is provided to us via cable.
In the public arena, shame sells. It entertains. It derails public policy. It does just about everything but serve its natural purpose of edifying and improving its subject because now it is amplified into humiliation. The only defense is the adoption of shamelessness.
Paris Hilton, the wealthy stick figure, became famous because her boyfriend videotaped a tryst and the encounter was put on the Internet. Rather than retreat somewhere in private to heal, Miss Hilton opted to reject feelings of humiliation and has merely folded this horror into her public resume. She now appears frequently without underwear or embarrassment, as if fame and notoriety were indistinguishable. It is not entirely clear whether she did something wrong in her rendezvous with the cad who released the videotape, but it seems clearer that she hasn't even considered the ethical implications of transforming what should be shame into market share. Reducing a shameful act to mere bad manners or worse, luck, simply pretends that anything can be made right by embracing it.
The deletion of shame in certain matters simply to survive has its role. In my childhood, my mother would not say the word "divorce," in proximity to her children, because the estate was so fraught with the aroma of immorality. Permanence in marriage was a religious ideal, if not a practical one. Society made the requisite changes so people could live their lives.
One curiosity of the time was the word "cancer." Dying of it carried some manner of stigma and in my days of writing obituaries I have more than once encountered a funeral director reluctant to part with a cause of death only to finally sigh and whisper "cancer," as if this were somehow a reflection on its victim. A half-generation later, men were sitting atop floats at the Gay Pride parade in American cities next to signs that read "AIDS Sufferer," and others displayed T-shirts printed "HIV+". These men were convinced in the correctness of their choices in terms of sexual conduct but were also baring themselves to scrutiny in an act of courage to make a spitefully reluctant America acknowledge a plague. They also were revealing the intimate aspects of themselves in ways unthinkable to most people. They were risking a public shaming to point out the larger shame in which the public was complicit. They had a choice.
The Rev. Brent Dugan did not. By all accounts a quietly enthusiastic pastor at a suburban Pittsburgh congregation, the Rev. Dugan appeared to have no political pronouncements to make, preached a Gospel of non-aggression, and nobody in his flock seemed concerned about how he spent his bachelor hours. Schooled in theology and divinity, the Rev. Dugan had little understanding of the phenomenon called "sweeps week," when viewership at television stations is measured and, based on those numbers, sets advertising rates.
Stations do much to attract maximum viewership at this time of year, and news teams often unveil their catchiest stuff. KDKA television spent a week promoting what it promised would be revelations about an area minister. What they had in the can was a report that, by all accounts, centered on the discovery that Rev. Dugan visited an adult bookstore in McKeesport. There are more troubling details and tape recordings, which could point either to illegal conduct or a lonely man's sad fantasies. In a less fevered time, Rev. Dugan's situation would have been a matter for police or psychiatry. Today they become the stuff of a sweeps-week promotion for a citizenry addicted to shock. But none of this made it on the air. The Rev. Dugan vanished from his home and, in a gesture of magnanimity worthy of a congressman handing back a bribe, KDKA announced it would not air its report on the "area clergyman" because of fears he might harm himself.
He did. No one is sure if the Rev. Dugan got word that KDKA had decided against broadcasting its revelations about his life. What is clear is that he left a suicide note explaining his shame and horror at what was about to be made public, checked into a motel in Mercer County and overdosed on liquor and aspirin. Marty Griffin, the go-for-broke reporter who worked the story was quoted saying that Rev. Dugan's behavior, if not illegal, might have violated the rules of his church.
While it is gratifying to know that KDKA has taken on the job of enforcing rules for the Presbyterian Church, it might have been nicer to know just what of public interest lay in the decision to pursue a story that turned out to be fatal to a subject who must have surprised everyone by feeling ashamed. KDKA, which presumably thought it necessary for the public to know about Rev. Dugan's sex life, has gone rather mute.
In short, KDKA had a sweeps-week story. I'm sure I would have watched, much the way I cannot resist slowing down at school bus crashes or watching couples fistfight in shopping malls. But when I do so, I feel a sense of shame in myself for the enjoyment I disguise behind a loud tut-tutting. The salacious not only stirs our desires, it elevates our illusions of moral superiority. It is the junk food that has made us a nation of fatheads.
The Monday after Rev. Dugan's suicide, I tuned in to Mr. Griffin's morning radio talk show to see how he would explain this matter. In a language of restraint foreign to him, Mr. Griffin expressed the station's condolences. He offered his own condolences. He told everyone that this was not the time to discuss the matter, although I couldn't have thought of a better moment and wonder what future time KDKA has set aside for the discussion of how an unaired report turned fatal.
Meanwhile, on television the truth was being extracted from Ted Haggard bit-by-bit, and his resignation letter was being read aloud by correspondents eager to parse vague wording into unambiguous confession. On the other side of Pennsylvania, a congressman was facing ejection from office because his mistress had accused him of choking her. She dropped the matter in exchange for $500,000. Public debate in that district had not been turning much on the Iraq War or the economy, and Democrats salivated at the prospect of gaining political strength from opponents humiliated by illicit sex in ways they had not been humiliated by revelations of illicit war.
At the end of Framley Parsonage, the Rev. Robarts suffers shame because of a matter of money, something he had used to connect himself with power. The two are interchangeable, both in literature and the corporeal world. Where the Rev. Robarts makes himself a lesser man one way, we do it in another, trading not money but shame, as a commodity to advance everything from a prosecutorial career to a life on television.
Trollope is fond of aphorisms. One he cites was a favorite of John Wesley, who asked, "Who can touch pitch and not be defiled?" Of late we have rolled in pitch, but it is the eyes of the Rev. Brent Dugan that now are stuck shut, and this time the shame is ours. ..more.. by Dennis Roddy is a Post-Gazette staff writer (droddy@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1965).
11-12-2006 National:
Clergymen are subject to the same passions as other men; and, as far as I can see, give way to them, in one line or in another, almost as frequently. -- Anthony Trollope, "Framley Parsonage"
Trollope alludes to the Rev. Mark Robarts, whose secret shame was a desire to move up in the world, playing one rich sponsor against another. Today, Rev. Robarts would be lauded for allowing the marketplace to work its magic. The thought of the Rev. Robarts disporting abed with a he-partner would have been beyond discussion. This is not to say it would never have occurred in Victorian England; our generation did not invent nor much improve sexuality. But we seem to have invented the uses of its shame for political and commercial advancement.
Last week, in separate instances, shame and sex were put to their respective uses, all by agents less concerned with advancing public morals than in promoting themselves, their ideologies and their market shares.
In Delaware, a judge has sentenced Russell Teeter, 69, a gardener, to wear a T-shirt emblazoned, "I am a registered sex offender." He was convicted of repeatedly displaying himself to young girls.
"This is a unique way to let his customers know that he is a registered sex offender," explains Donald Roberts, the prosecutor in the case. Putting Mr. Teeter in jail, where he would be restrained from displaying himself, might also solve the problem. The T-shirt seems more an exercise in public shaming than public protection. It is likely people will now come to Mr. Teeter's shop just to have a look at the newest monkey in the zoo. Possibly, they will bring their children. Chalk one up for a sentence that seems less to solve something than to satisfy someone.
On the other side of the Great Plains, the Rev. Ted Haggard finds himself unemployed, disgraced, groveling and altogether shown up by revelations that, notwithstanding his foursquare conviction that homosexuality is a veritable finger in God's eye, he ingested both methamphetamine and the man who sold it to him, one Mike Jones, a male prostitute.
After the ritual denials, the Rev. Haggard issued a letter to his congregation about the years he struggled with a dark corner of himself only to "find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach." Presumably we are to deduce from this that he is gay, and struggled not to be. I share his torment. I have struggled for years not to be bald. Genetics has failed us both.
Until he was caught, Rev. Haggard's most controversial act was to declare an obligation for evangelical Christians to fight climate change. He viewed it as a stewardship issue, a duty to not destroy the Earth.
Had he been caught pouring used crank case oil into the storm sewers of Colorado Springs, it is hard to imagine he would have been forced to exit his ministry in shame. Hypocrisy of that sort would have little entertainment value because, at its core, our fascination with Rev. Haggard's demise has less to do with his being a hypocrite than the pure fun of watching a public man dissolve in the most humiliating of circumstances. Long ago, we had to slow down to crane our necks at the mangled wreckage encasing our neighbors. Now it is provided to us via cable.
In the public arena, shame sells. It entertains. It derails public policy. It does just about everything but serve its natural purpose of edifying and improving its subject because now it is amplified into humiliation. The only defense is the adoption of shamelessness.
Paris Hilton, the wealthy stick figure, became famous because her boyfriend videotaped a tryst and the encounter was put on the Internet. Rather than retreat somewhere in private to heal, Miss Hilton opted to reject feelings of humiliation and has merely folded this horror into her public resume. She now appears frequently without underwear or embarrassment, as if fame and notoriety were indistinguishable. It is not entirely clear whether she did something wrong in her rendezvous with the cad who released the videotape, but it seems clearer that she hasn't even considered the ethical implications of transforming what should be shame into market share. Reducing a shameful act to mere bad manners or worse, luck, simply pretends that anything can be made right by embracing it.
The deletion of shame in certain matters simply to survive has its role. In my childhood, my mother would not say the word "divorce," in proximity to her children, because the estate was so fraught with the aroma of immorality. Permanence in marriage was a religious ideal, if not a practical one. Society made the requisite changes so people could live their lives.
One curiosity of the time was the word "cancer." Dying of it carried some manner of stigma and in my days of writing obituaries I have more than once encountered a funeral director reluctant to part with a cause of death only to finally sigh and whisper "cancer," as if this were somehow a reflection on its victim. A half-generation later, men were sitting atop floats at the Gay Pride parade in American cities next to signs that read "AIDS Sufferer," and others displayed T-shirts printed "HIV+". These men were convinced in the correctness of their choices in terms of sexual conduct but were also baring themselves to scrutiny in an act of courage to make a spitefully reluctant America acknowledge a plague. They also were revealing the intimate aspects of themselves in ways unthinkable to most people. They were risking a public shaming to point out the larger shame in which the public was complicit. They had a choice.
The Rev. Brent Dugan did not. By all accounts a quietly enthusiastic pastor at a suburban Pittsburgh congregation, the Rev. Dugan appeared to have no political pronouncements to make, preached a Gospel of non-aggression, and nobody in his flock seemed concerned about how he spent his bachelor hours. Schooled in theology and divinity, the Rev. Dugan had little understanding of the phenomenon called "sweeps week," when viewership at television stations is measured and, based on those numbers, sets advertising rates.
Stations do much to attract maximum viewership at this time of year, and news teams often unveil their catchiest stuff. KDKA television spent a week promoting what it promised would be revelations about an area minister. What they had in the can was a report that, by all accounts, centered on the discovery that Rev. Dugan visited an adult bookstore in McKeesport. There are more troubling details and tape recordings, which could point either to illegal conduct or a lonely man's sad fantasies. In a less fevered time, Rev. Dugan's situation would have been a matter for police or psychiatry. Today they become the stuff of a sweeps-week promotion for a citizenry addicted to shock. But none of this made it on the air. The Rev. Dugan vanished from his home and, in a gesture of magnanimity worthy of a congressman handing back a bribe, KDKA announced it would not air its report on the "area clergyman" because of fears he might harm himself.
He did. No one is sure if the Rev. Dugan got word that KDKA had decided against broadcasting its revelations about his life. What is clear is that he left a suicide note explaining his shame and horror at what was about to be made public, checked into a motel in Mercer County and overdosed on liquor and aspirin. Marty Griffin, the go-for-broke reporter who worked the story was quoted saying that Rev. Dugan's behavior, if not illegal, might have violated the rules of his church.
While it is gratifying to know that KDKA has taken on the job of enforcing rules for the Presbyterian Church, it might have been nicer to know just what of public interest lay in the decision to pursue a story that turned out to be fatal to a subject who must have surprised everyone by feeling ashamed. KDKA, which presumably thought it necessary for the public to know about Rev. Dugan's sex life, has gone rather mute.
In short, KDKA had a sweeps-week story. I'm sure I would have watched, much the way I cannot resist slowing down at school bus crashes or watching couples fistfight in shopping malls. But when I do so, I feel a sense of shame in myself for the enjoyment I disguise behind a loud tut-tutting. The salacious not only stirs our desires, it elevates our illusions of moral superiority. It is the junk food that has made us a nation of fatheads.
The Monday after Rev. Dugan's suicide, I tuned in to Mr. Griffin's morning radio talk show to see how he would explain this matter. In a language of restraint foreign to him, Mr. Griffin expressed the station's condolences. He offered his own condolences. He told everyone that this was not the time to discuss the matter, although I couldn't have thought of a better moment and wonder what future time KDKA has set aside for the discussion of how an unaired report turned fatal.
Meanwhile, on television the truth was being extracted from Ted Haggard bit-by-bit, and his resignation letter was being read aloud by correspondents eager to parse vague wording into unambiguous confession. On the other side of Pennsylvania, a congressman was facing ejection from office because his mistress had accused him of choking her. She dropped the matter in exchange for $500,000. Public debate in that district had not been turning much on the Iraq War or the economy, and Democrats salivated at the prospect of gaining political strength from opponents humiliated by illicit sex in ways they had not been humiliated by revelations of illicit war.
At the end of Framley Parsonage, the Rev. Robarts suffers shame because of a matter of money, something he had used to connect himself with power. The two are interchangeable, both in literature and the corporeal world. Where the Rev. Robarts makes himself a lesser man one way, we do it in another, trading not money but shame, as a commodity to advance everything from a prosecutorial career to a life on television.
Trollope is fond of aphorisms. One he cites was a favorite of John Wesley, who asked, "Who can touch pitch and not be defiled?" Of late we have rolled in pitch, but it is the eyes of the Rev. Brent Dugan that now are stuck shut, and this time the shame is ours. ..more.. by Dennis Roddy is a Post-Gazette staff writer (droddy@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1965).
Tuned In: After suicide, stations should rethink 'gotcha stories'
Article Tags
(.Gotcha Stories,
(.Suicides - Aired for/during Sweeps
The "sweeps" months, when local TV news promotions and "special reports" are at their most over-the-top, have become a routine annoyance to discerning television viewers. Less than a week into the current November sweeps period, they've taken a tragic turn.
The Rev. Brent Dugan, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon, committed suicide last week after KDKA-TV aired a series of promotions for a Marty Griffin report that suggested Dugan was involved in illicit behavior.
Some viewers sent me understandably emotional e-mails that were as hyperbolic as the TV news promos they decry (one subject line: "KDKA's Assassination of Ben Avon Pastor"). That goes too far. It was Dugan's choice to overdose on aspirin and alcohol in a Mercer County motel. But this tragic outcome ought to make reporters and news directors in all newsrooms, particularly KDKA management and Griffin, take a contemplative look at the impact salacious, fear-mongering sweeps-month promos and reports can have.
TV news has an obligation to uncover wrongdoing, but too often stations appear to be more excited about reporting stories that bring themselves attention. Were the accusations in Griffin's investigation true? Did the report merit airing? There's no way of knowing because the story never aired.
KDKA general manager Chris Pike said the station would have no comment beyond a statement released Friday night that expressed condolences to Dugan's family and friends and explained that KDKA had "conducted a monthlong investigation into reports of public and illegal sexual behavior by Pastor Dugan. The results of that investigation were scheduled to air [Thursday] evening. ... That evening the station received information from someone close to Pastor Dugan that indicated that he was considering doing harm to himself. As a result, the station made the decision not to air the story."
News director John Verrilli would not say whether Griffin's story will air; on Friday afternoon Pike said it was unlikely to air. Griffin did not respond to a message on his work voice mail seeking comment.
Promos for the report were broadcast for several days last week. They showed Griffin confronting Dugan about his alleged visits to an adult bookstore. It was unclear from the promos what other details the report would reveal.
During the 11 p.m. news Thursday, Griffin said his investigation "uncovered illicit, possibly illegal, activity by a local minister, activities which, at the very least, violated the rules of his denomination."
It's the use of key words -- possibly illegal, at the very least -- that call into question whether the report was worth doing in the first place. If the best Griffin could dig up was a trip to an adult bookstore (not illegal) and violation of church rules, then there's not much in it to serve the public interest. It comes off looking like another "gotcha"-style story designed for no benefit except the TV station's ratings.
What aired Thursday did not mention Dugan by name; he wasn't shown on screen. His church and denomination were not named. But Dugan was pictured in promos that aired for several days earlier on KDKA. The damage was done.
Even if you give station management the benefit of the doubt that they were unaware of Dugan's threat to himself when they chose to air the promos, you have to ask, do TV station promos for stories of wrongdoing have to be so licking-their-chops sensational? They're designed to lure viewers, but clearly they can have unintended consequences as well.
The possibility of the harm they can cause -- not only to the person under investigation, but to his family and community -- needs to be considered. (It should be noted, someone could just as easily be provoked by newspaper stories, but, tabloids aside, you don't usually see the print media stoop to scare tactics to promote upcoming reports.)
And why did KDKA air the promos and Thursday night's non-report and choose not to cover Dugan's suicide? Verrilli wouldn't comment on that, either.
For Griffin, provocative reporting is nothing new. During last November's sweeps -- a four-week period during which Nielsen Media Research measures viewership so stations can set advertising rates -- Griffin ventured onto Port Authority property while reporting on lax security at a bus garage. He was eventually found not guilty of trespassing on appeal.
Griffin worked at KXAS-TV in Dallas in the 1990s, when he reported on sexual assault allegations against two Dallas Cowboy football players by a former topless dancer. She later recanted, according to a 1997 Dallas Morning News report, and the players sued KXAS and Griffin. The station settled with the players for $2.2 million, according to the Dallas paper. Griffin's attorney told the paper that the reporter admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
One would hope the death of a human being would cause station management and staff to re-evaluate the way they cover and promote news, particularly sweeps- month features. Disgusted viewers may choose not to watch KDKA, but there's a problem with that approach: The lower that stations' ratings go, the more desperate for attention they tend to get and the greater the lengths they'll try. (Remember the tawdry tone of WPXI's newscasts when they were a perennial third place?)
With a thirst for profit driving media conglomerates' news coverage, this sort of thing could happen again. That may be the greatest tragedy of all. ..more.. by Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Rev. Brent Dugan, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon, committed suicide last week after KDKA-TV aired a series of promotions for a Marty Griffin report that suggested Dugan was involved in illicit behavior.
Some viewers sent me understandably emotional e-mails that were as hyperbolic as the TV news promos they decry (one subject line: "KDKA's Assassination of Ben Avon Pastor"). That goes too far. It was Dugan's choice to overdose on aspirin and alcohol in a Mercer County motel. But this tragic outcome ought to make reporters and news directors in all newsrooms, particularly KDKA management and Griffin, take a contemplative look at the impact salacious, fear-mongering sweeps-month promos and reports can have.
TV news has an obligation to uncover wrongdoing, but too often stations appear to be more excited about reporting stories that bring themselves attention. Were the accusations in Griffin's investigation true? Did the report merit airing? There's no way of knowing because the story never aired.
KDKA general manager Chris Pike said the station would have no comment beyond a statement released Friday night that expressed condolences to Dugan's family and friends and explained that KDKA had "conducted a monthlong investigation into reports of public and illegal sexual behavior by Pastor Dugan. The results of that investigation were scheduled to air [Thursday] evening. ... That evening the station received information from someone close to Pastor Dugan that indicated that he was considering doing harm to himself. As a result, the station made the decision not to air the story."
News director John Verrilli would not say whether Griffin's story will air; on Friday afternoon Pike said it was unlikely to air. Griffin did not respond to a message on his work voice mail seeking comment.
Promos for the report were broadcast for several days last week. They showed Griffin confronting Dugan about his alleged visits to an adult bookstore. It was unclear from the promos what other details the report would reveal.
During the 11 p.m. news Thursday, Griffin said his investigation "uncovered illicit, possibly illegal, activity by a local minister, activities which, at the very least, violated the rules of his denomination."
It's the use of key words -- possibly illegal, at the very least -- that call into question whether the report was worth doing in the first place. If the best Griffin could dig up was a trip to an adult bookstore (not illegal) and violation of church rules, then there's not much in it to serve the public interest. It comes off looking like another "gotcha"-style story designed for no benefit except the TV station's ratings.
What aired Thursday did not mention Dugan by name; he wasn't shown on screen. His church and denomination were not named. But Dugan was pictured in promos that aired for several days earlier on KDKA. The damage was done.
Even if you give station management the benefit of the doubt that they were unaware of Dugan's threat to himself when they chose to air the promos, you have to ask, do TV station promos for stories of wrongdoing have to be so licking-their-chops sensational? They're designed to lure viewers, but clearly they can have unintended consequences as well.
The possibility of the harm they can cause -- not only to the person under investigation, but to his family and community -- needs to be considered. (It should be noted, someone could just as easily be provoked by newspaper stories, but, tabloids aside, you don't usually see the print media stoop to scare tactics to promote upcoming reports.)
And why did KDKA air the promos and Thursday night's non-report and choose not to cover Dugan's suicide? Verrilli wouldn't comment on that, either.
For Griffin, provocative reporting is nothing new. During last November's sweeps -- a four-week period during which Nielsen Media Research measures viewership so stations can set advertising rates -- Griffin ventured onto Port Authority property while reporting on lax security at a bus garage. He was eventually found not guilty of trespassing on appeal.
Griffin worked at KXAS-TV in Dallas in the 1990s, when he reported on sexual assault allegations against two Dallas Cowboy football players by a former topless dancer. She later recanted, according to a 1997 Dallas Morning News report, and the players sued KXAS and Griffin. The station settled with the players for $2.2 million, according to the Dallas paper. Griffin's attorney told the paper that the reporter admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
One would hope the death of a human being would cause station management and staff to re-evaluate the way they cover and promote news, particularly sweeps- month features. Disgusted viewers may choose not to watch KDKA, but there's a problem with that approach: The lower that stations' ratings go, the more desperate for attention they tend to get and the greater the lengths they'll try. (Remember the tawdry tone of WPXI's newscasts when they were a perennial third place?)
With a thirst for profit driving media conglomerates' news coverage, this sort of thing could happen again. That may be the greatest tragedy of all. ..more.. by Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)