The Centers for Disease Control released a new study that says during 2001--2003, an estimated 7,475 children (2,492 per year) aged 1--14 years were treated for nonfatal motor vehicle backover injuries in U.S. hospital emergency departments.
Close to half of the injuries were among children less than four years old.
The advocacy group Kids and Cars has been concerned about this issue for some time. Consumer Reports even looked at which vehicles have the most dangerous blind spots for such accidents. Consumer Reports said:
To measure the blind spots, a 28-inch traffic cone was positioned behind the vehicle at the point where the driver could just see its top. As the illustration shows, longer and taller vehicles tend to have significantly larger blind spots.
WCCO-TV did one of my favorite creative demonstrations of the issue some time back. The station asked parents to fill out a safety survey. While the adults were focused on the survey, the station quietly placed a cone behind the driver's vehicle. Then the station asked the driver to back out on the street. While the drivers did look, they didn't see the child sized cone and rolled right over it. The new CDC study gives a fresh reason to take a look at this issue.
Space NonsenseSpace.com, which uses the motto "Something Amazing Every Day," has something amazing to say about a story it ran last week. It turns out the report that there could be new evidence of life on Mars is more than a little spacey.
In fact NASA says it is flat out wrong.
Talking Dirty On TV
No matter how you feel about whether DJs should be able to talk dirty on the radio, or whether Congress should increase fines for stations that broadcast indecent content, there is a different issue involved when the language is part of news coverage.
PBS's Frontline documentary, "A Company of Soldiers" set to air nationwide February 22 will raise the debate, no doubt.
David Fanning, Executive Producer for Frontline, wrote a memo to PBS station General Managers saying:
This is a film about young men at war, often in combat, and always in danger. As you might expect, the language of these soldiers is sprinkled with expletives, especially at their moments of greatest fear and stress. As we edited the program, we were judicious, but came to believe that some of that language was an integral part of our journalistic mission: to give viewers a realistic portrait of our soldiers at war. We feel strongly that the language of war should not be sanitized and that there is nothing indecent about its use in this context. As we have done in the past, we brought the matter of language to the attention of PBS and indicated our desire to create two versions of the program -- a version with the language left intact for a hard feed, and an edited version to be soft-fed to stations for whom such language has always been a matter of local sensitivity. This has been standard practice for years with FRONTLINE programs with language issues. PBS, citing FCC indecency rules, has decided to hard-feed the sanitized version and provide a soft-feed of the intact version. We have always understood that the decision to broadcast is a local decision. We respect the right of every station to make its own decision, based on its own audience. We recognize that recent actions by the FCC have put a burden on individual stations, exposing them to fines and legal costs.
As you deliberate about this program, there are some things we would ask you to consider. Our attorneys, including outside counsel, have advised us that the expletives in "A Company of Soldiers" do not violate the FCC's indecency rule. They have concluded that the uses of the f-word and others in this film do not cross the FCC's guidance against "gratuitous" use. They are not meant to "titillate" or "pander" to the audience. And as you know, there is a "safe harbor" after 10 p.m. for such language for those stations who regularly air the program at that hour. [See FCC rules]
You no doubt are familiar with the recent case of ABC's broadcast of the film "Saving Private Ryan," which contained repeated instances of similar language, used in the same context as this FRONTLINE. It was widely reported that a majority of the FCC commissioners decided they would not support viewer complaints about the language in "Saving Private Ryan," and outgoing Chairman Michael Powell concluded that the agency should not take action against the ABC stations that aired it because the language was part of accurately portraying the story about the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. Some of you may have heard Chairman Powell's remarks at a gathering of public television colleagues earlier this week, suggesting that context is indeed key to these decisions and that for public television the greater risk is in self-censorship. For these journalistic and legal reasons, FRONTLINE believes this is the moment for public television to stand firm and broadcast "A Company of Soldiers" intact, as it was intended. We believe what is at issue is not the particulars of this case, but the principle of editorial independence. Because overreacting by the FCC is at its heart a First Amendment issue, all programs are at risk, whether art, science, history, culture, or public affairs. We believe the risks of an adverse outcome are small and the principles we stand on are large. Editorial decisions should be free from influence by the government and should be made in accordance with the standards, practices, and mission of public broadcasting.
What is your local PBS station planning to do with this program? What do veteran groups have to say about this? Some were pretty outspoken about TV stations choosing not to air "Saving Private Ryan" because of concerns they might get whacked by the FCC. How concerned are TV stations and radio stations about what they can say on the air in the context of a news program?
FCC Considering Cell Phones on Airplanes
The FCC, while not talking about foul language on TV and radio, has a lot of other stuff going on. One of the issues is whether to allow people to use their cell phones while flying. In the end, it is not just an FCC decision but the Federal Aviation Administration will have to also allow cell phone use.
The FCC has drafted its first recommendation (in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) that would let cell phone users talk and fly.
Keeping the Names of Sick Farms Secret
Here is something that I would think all journalists would be interested in. Bills moving through the Maryland and Utah legislatures would allow the identities of farms and ranches where animal disease outbreaks have been confirmed to remain secret. Those who back the bills say that by naming the farms, photographers and reporters will come tromping around and risk spreading the disease.
Wouldn't other neighbors and the community need to know if there was an infected farm near them?
Another Station Questions Study
Last week I passed along some questions about whether the highly publicized study about local news coverage of the 2004 elections was complete. Now, I have another letter, this one from
KING-TV in Seattle that seems to point out some pretty serious omissions in the study.
Peter O'Connell, the Executive Producer for Special Projects at KING dropped a letter to the study authors and copied me on the note to pass along to you:
I am writing because I am troubled by the findings of the Lear Center study "Local News Coverage of the 2004 Campaigns." KING-TV believes in covering politics. We have a full time political unit. We do a weekly political show. We host and televise political debates. And we give free air time to candidates. But, little of our commitment to political coverage shows up in the study. While I agree that we can and should do more, I wonder why the study does not seem to accurately portray what we did in 2004.
To begin with, it seems odd to do a study on broadcast political coverage that only looks between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. The decision to exclude Sunday daytime arbitrarily excludes a time period where viewers expect to see politics. This study ignores the contributions of programs like "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation," and "This Week." For KING, the time limitation means much of the work by our political unit is never even considered. We do a weekly political show that airs at 4:30 p.m. on Sundays, just ahead of the local news. (The show also airs at 10:30 p.m. on our duopoly station, right after the top rated 10 p.m. newscast in the market, which was also excluded from the study.) In October, this political show featured a debate for Congress, a debate for state Attorney General, an Ad Watch special, and a special examining the issues in the most significant state and local races. Stations also do a significant amount of political coverage on morning shows, where there is more time for extended discussion. At KING, we did live interviews with candidates for Governor and Congress on our morning shows in October. But, none of that work is reflected in the study.
The data collected seems to have some significant gaps, especially when it comes to non-Presidential coverage. KING did a primetime gubernatorial debate on October 13 that was missed by Lear. KING provided eight minutes of free candidate time following our 6:30 p.m. newscasts in October. The Lear report says it only observed one of those segments. (The segments were not credited as part of news coverage either.) In 2004, the Belo stations tracked their political coverage for a corporate report, making it relatively easy to compare our records with what was captured in the Lear Center study. I spot checked some of the non-Presidential stories we did and found a surprising number of them missing. For example, on October 9, we ran a 3:00 piece at 5:30 p.m. with excerpts from the Attorney General debate on our weekly political show. That story is not in the Lear database. On October 20, we did a story about a Supreme Court justice running for re-election who was being opposed by families of murder victims, which I can't find in the Lear archive. We did several stories on state Initiative 892, which would have allowed expansion of slot machines, but none of them were logged. In fact, the archive only lists five KING stories about ballot initiatives, many fewer than we aired in October. We did six locally produced Ad Watches during the reporting period, but only got credit for four. This list does not represent an exhaustive comparison of our records and the Lear database. It is just a spot check of local stories.
I also question some of the story focus coding that was done. While the study concludes KING did more issue oriented stories than other Seattle stations, it says we still focused more on the horse race than the issues. Regardless of the study's conclusion, I know that was not the case.
Again, a spot check of the Lear archive reveals some curious coding. Story 2004-Seattle-NBC-279-46-05 was the story we did on our late news after the October 5 VP debate. It is coded as "horserace". The anchor intro included the results of a poll we did after the debate, which took :18 to report. The remaining 2:23 of the story was about the substance of the debate.
Similarily, story 2004-Seattle-NBC-301-34-03 is about the final debate between the two candidates for Attorney General. It is also coded "horserace", even though the first 2:10 of the story is about the issues in the debate. The reporter tag mentions the latest poll results.
Story 2004-Seattle-NBC-295-46-09 was a typical story that we did on the Presidential race. The first 1:06 was purely issue oriented, with sound bites on Social Security savings accounts and stem cell research. The last :06 said polls show the race is close in the battleground states. This story was coded "strategy". It should have been "issue". Perhaps, a weak case could be made for "horserace" because there was a brief mention of poll results at the end. But, there was absolutely nothing about campaign strategy anywhere in this story.
Perhaps these examples are anomalies. But, I did not run across any stories that Lear coded as issue-oriented when they were actually about strategy. The study also relies on story counts rather than time allocations for most of its comparisons, which can distort the results. On a day when we announce poll results, there may be three 15 second stories with the polls for President, Governor, and U.S. Senate. Then, we do a 3:00 Ad Watch or some other issue-oriented story.
The study concludes only 25 percent of our coverage was about issues that day -- one story out of four. But, 80 percent of the time was spent on issues, a far different measurement -- and, I believe, a more accurate one.
A couple of other thoughts. The report says a typical half hour of news included 3:11 of political coverage, which is considerably better than I expected, with more politics than crime. Also, the definition of "local" pretty much guarantees it will be a small percentage of the story count, especially in a state like Washington. Cities, counties, and school districts here purposely avoid holding elections on the Presidential cycle. So, the only races that qualify as local in Seattle are Congress, the state legislature, and a few ballot measures. Very few of these races are competitive and given the small number of people in our viewing area who are eligible to vote in any given legislative race, there needs to be some other compelling factor about the story that makes it of interest to those who do not live a particular district. Under those circumstances, getting a local percentage anywhere near 10 percent is quite remarkable.
Again, there is certainly more that KING and other broadcasters can do to help inform the public about politics and government. But, it does not help to inaccurately under-represent our current efforts. In fact, in the current regulatory environment, such a portrayal could end up damaging broadcasters who believe in practicing civic journalism.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and we look forward to your response.
Peter O'Connell
Executive Producer, KING-TV
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.
