Published Jan 23, 2007, 6:59pm
I have a bias when it comes to TV reporters.
Although ironic, having been named after a TV reporter, Mike Botula, who reported for Los Angeles’ KTLA among other outlets and then served as chief spokesman for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office some years after introducing my parents to each other, I did some naughty things to TV reporters back in my print days.
NBC10's Harry Hairston.
Courtesy WCAU-TV.
I’d be covering a story for two or three weeks and it would finally become TV worthy or breaking a news story would happen in a town where I was on a first-name basis with the local officials, because I talked to them four or five times a week. Joe TV Reporter would show up, touch up his makeup and then expect the print guys, me usually, to bring him up to speed. I was nice about it the first couple of times, until watching the news and hearing “Eyewitness News has learned….” followed by whatever I told the Ken doll with a microphone. Eventually, I wised up and would happily tell my broadcast “colleagues” abject fiction, only to see it aired hours later, on both WABC-TV and WWOR-TV among other stations.
And never once did the reporter in question call spitting blood.
So watching NBC10’s news in Philly the other day, I was prepared to think the worst about a report by Harry Hairston, regarding a New Jersey school district showing third-grade students a video promoting tolerance of different kinds of families, including families with same-sex parents. For the record, the piece on the Evesham/Marlton school district aired a number of times, first during the 5 p.m. news, where there was a little bit more discussion about the matter, but nothing that really salvaged the story, before it ran at 11 with no further comment.
I spoke with Hairston yesterday, as he was frenetically working on other stories for Tuesday night’s broadcast, including a follow up on Monday’s report. I give him a lot of credit for discussing the issue on the record and walking me through — to some extent — how the story developed, something a lot of other reporters wouldn’t do.
I had some pretty immediate concerns about the story — and how it was reported. First, what my old journalism professor (who was also a city or assignment editor at a daily) called the “BS detector” when it turned out the story was prompted by an email from an angry parent — who then wouldn’t go on the record for the story. And while there are good reasons why a parent might not want to go on the record, it sets off all the warning bells to be careful. Hairston didn’t want to say whether the parent discussed the issue off the record (and it would have been unethical for him to answer, but you gotta ask), although he said he was able to confirm that the family complained to the school district first, which puts the whole story on a firmer footing.
Then the interview — and the quotes aired — with the school district’s director of curriculum, Dr. Mary Ann Domico seemed worrisome. While she would speak on the record, she refused to go on the air, defending the video as preaching nothing more than tolerance, but Harriston also decided to use a quote of Domico saying “I don’t have to talk to the media.”
I asked him about it.
“I read the quote back to her twice,” Hairston making it clear he wasn’t engaging in ambush journalism, and demonstrating the well-known “are you really sure this is the quote you want me to use?” technique used by journalists for generations. Hairston basically gave her a shot not to sound as bad as she did and ought to get points for being a nice guy.
I tried to probe further into the process of the story, including what seemed to me to be a glaring failure to talk to either a child psychologist or other child development expert as to whether showing such a video to third grade kids could be harmful or confusing, but Hairston was very reluctant to discuss it.
“When it comes to process, it’s not my place to talk about it, that’s internal,” he said. Possibly more illuminating is that fact that Hairston said he did interview a child psychologist for the follow-up segment, which aired Tuesday.
While he was reluctant to talk about process, he did want to talk about the story and the issue.
“I really like this story,” he said. “I like that this bring this issue out into the light.”
Hairston cited statistics showing something between one to nine million kids have a gay parent, although other sources suggest the number could be even higher, “I think it’s the media’s job to put these stories out there. I hope more people talk about it, more people write about it. Some people are not going to love that it’s out there, and some will.”
He said the response to the story has been exciting and largely positive, one of the reason’s the station chose to air a follow-up piece. He talked about how the litany of homicides and car crashes don’t always connect to viewers, while this sort of more issue-oriented reporting has people talking.
“This is a situation we need to discuss,” Hairston said. “This is why America is a great country, a place where we can have these conversations. That’s we have to do stories like this. That’s what makes me proud to be a member of the media.”
