The way a story is told and how it is reported is very important. In 2005 we have several generations of people that are the target audiences of newspapers, television, and radio and internet news sites. A guest instructor at a leadership seminar that I recently attended stressed the importance of not overlooking any of the generations that we live amongst and serve in our efforts to keep people informed.
As a child on the tag end of the Baby Boomer generation, I have witnessed enormous changes in technology and news services. We went from Walter Cronkite captivating audiences all across our nation with his down to earth and honest approach that families awaited every day to 24 hour news stations like CNN and FOX. We went from newspapers like the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times,(which was the afternoon newspaper delivery), to USA today which captured the nation with shorter more concise articles because the way people channeled their information and the constraint of time limitations was shown in national studies that people still wanted news, but that society had changed to a point where time for family, time for work, time for pleasure and time for the news were all in competition.
The â??Xâ? generation and the â??Yâ? or Next generation are targeted by news stations because of the importance placed on their family and leisure activities. News outlets now have to compete with youth demographics as well as the internet and e-mail. People today want information now. They donâ?'t want to wait. They want their news and information to be informative and accurate and they want it to be at the touch of their fingers.
The importance of this has been seen many times locally and nationally. The complete accuracy of the news stories and their follow ups have been the subject of several blunders lately. People are holding their journalists accountable for their stories like never before. Veteran news reporter Dan Rather took a huge hit for not checking out his sources on a segment he did on President George W. Bush. To Dan Ratherâ?'s credit, when he learned of the mistake he made he took full responsibility for his actions. Local reporter Tony Hyatt had the same problem when his reporting of a shooting which aired on a Sunday on television was not updated on their station website until the following Wednesday. This delay caused problems that led to a perception that a spin was being placed on the story to only show one side of the issue. Tony is a stand up guy. He addressed the problem and even published an editorial on our website.
On February 8, 2005, FOP President Richard Dotson was interviewed by WFIE Channel 14 Reporter Ben Jackey. Mr. Jackey was interested in merger and consolidation of Government and Police Departments. Evansville, Indiana is considering this measure and they wanted to talk to people about merger and its pros and cons. Mr. Jackey interviewed President Dotson on tape along with several other individuals that day. Like most news stations WFIE also has a website that publishes versions of their reporterâ?'s news stories. Mr. Jackeyâ?'s news story that aired was accurate in all respects. Unfortunately when he sent his notes over to the web site staff they inadvertently attributed a quote from one person as a comment made by President Dotson.
Here is the misquote: Fraternal Order of Police president Richard Dotson says, "The city operates different from the county. What we did was stick a lot of county police that have no training on how to deal with people in the city."
Understandably this upset many of our members that had worked for the former Jefferson County Police Department and many former Louisville Division of Police Officers. Most of our officers did not believe our FOP President would make such a disparaging remark about our members. We investigated the incident and here is what we found out.
Like the Tony Hyatt story, Mr. Jackey relied on someone in another part of his department to do their job as accurately as he did. It didnâ?'t happen. FOP Lodge 2nd Vice President Gary Connor contacted Mr. Jackey about the article. He discovered that Mr. Jackey was the victim of a flawed system just like Tony Hyatt was. Mr. Jackey apologized for the staff and took full responsibility. We see this trend in reporting as the only way that a reporter can maintain their credibility and veracity. Thank you Ben Jackey, Tony Hyatt and Dan Rather for proving that reporters can be trusted.
Mr. Jackey informed VP Connor that the aforementioned quote came from a woman that he interviewed named Wanda McIntire. We did a little further checking and found that Ms. McIntire is a local activist in Louisville that has no connection to the Police Department. She is a convicted felon that is often at odds with the Police. She has no knowledge of how police are trained and had no business commenting on something she knew nothing about. We have seen this happen time and time again. Police tactics and training are not now and never should be subject to topical discussion and speculation by amateurs. Police Departments, the Governments and the Courts are the only qualified groups that should set the standards and practices of police training and tactics. The people of the jurisdictions represented surely should have a say in the matter, most people rely on the experts to determine what is deemed good training and what is not. Police training academies across the nation constantly fine tune their training programs to change with societal needs and demands. If there is a better way of doing something we are always willing to try it.
It is incumbent on News reporters to not only factually report their stories like all of the above mentioned reporters have done, but it seems that in todayâ?'s fast paced society that checking out the background of sources is also vitally important as well as following up to make sure that everything that you put you name to, in any given format is checked out before it goes on the air, the web or to print.