CBS deceived its viewers. The deception was deliberate and harmful.
One might argue that what CBS did is not much different from what TV does all the time. We insert graphics behind anchors; we can even create virtual news sets in empty studios. Television news sets include fake monitors and backdrops that all, in some way, deceive the viewers. We use zoom lenses, tape editors, and special effects every day. Every light we hang, every edit we make alters the reality of how things would have happened without our presence.
There is a big difference.
Viewers understand those deceptions. They expect them. The viewer, at some level understands that what happens in a studio sometimes is engineered. Those deceptions cause no harm to the journalistic integrity of the news organization.
But when anchors go live from the field, I believe viewers watch the coverage believing the anchor is in the field to show us the truths the journalist discovered first-hand. Being on the scene gives credibility to the anchor’s words, but it cuts both ways: Being on the scene of a deception links the journalist directly to the deed.
It is no wonder that public confidence in television news is eroding. A year ago, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation asked Americans how the felt about television news. Some 60% of those responding said they agreed with the statement “lately, I’ve become more skeptical about the accuracy of anything I hear on the news.”
In the past, it was CBS that held firm to some important production ethics. CBS was the last network to allow cutaway pictures to cover edits in interviews. The central issue was whether the viewer understood an interview had been edited, not whether the viewer would see a jump cut. This one technique became the punch line of the Holly Hunter/John Hurt movie Broadcast News. CBS has held firmly against using production techniques such as adding music and sound in news stories with the understanding that viewers would be fooled or manipulated by the music.
CBS was right to hold on to those old ideas of editorial and visual honesty. It makes this debacle all the more difficult to defend.
It is almost universally true that mankind has developed technology faster than we develop ethical guidelines about how to use the technology. Somewhere in the box of the gizmo that enables stations and networks to seamlessly insert pictures into Times Square maybe there should be a line or two in the owner’s manual that says “Caution: This gizmo may confuse your viewers and harm your credibility. Before you use this gizmo, users should have a full conversation about how it will be used.”
CBS could have ethically covered up NBC’s Jumbotron message. CBS could have electronically inserted its logo in a more overt and obvious way, the same way stations insert over the shoulder graphics and logos every day. The viewer would have known the CBS logo was placed there electronically and nobody would care.
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