Ex-NBC journalist explains why NBC News sucks
Tons of readers are sending me ex-NBC/Dateline reporter John Hockenberry’s new piece in Technology Review spilling the beans on his travails at the Peacock Network. Quick version: NBC News sucks because management doesn’t get how to use technology; news executives are a cowardly herd of unoriginal thinkers; GE empty suits blocked him from reporting on the bin Laden family; and Stone Phillips is an idiot. Can’t argue with most of that.
A few snippets. First, Hockenberry on the homogeneous network news herd:
Stories from the edge were not typically reassuring about the future. In this sense they were like actual news, unpredictable flashes from the unknown. On the other hand, the coveted emotional center was reliable, it was predictable, and its story lines could be duplicated over and over. It reassured the audience by telling it what it already knew rather than challenging it to learn. This explains why TV news voices all use similar cadences, why all anchors seem to sound alike, why reporters in the field all use the identical tone of urgency no matter whether the story is about the devastating aftermath of an earthquake or someone’s lost kitty.
It also explains why TV news seems so archaic next to the advertising and entertainment content on the same networks. Among the greatest frustrations of working in TV news over the past decade was to see that while advertisers and entertainment producers were permitted to do wildly risky things in pursuit of audiences, news producers rarely ventured out of a safety zone of crime, celebrity, and character-driven tragedy yarns.
Second, on dealing with Phillips:
In the end, perhaps the work that I was most proud of at NBC marginalized me within the organization and was my undoing. I had done some of the first live Internet audio and video webcasts on MSNBC. I anchored live Web broadcasts from the political conventions in 2000 when such coverage was just beginning. I helped produce live interactive stories for Dateline where the audience could vote during commercial breaks on how a crime mystery or a hostage situation would turn out. I loved what we could do through the fusion of TV and the Internet. During one interactive broadcast, I reported the instant returns from audience surveys live in the studio, with different results for each time zone as Dateline was broadcast across the country. Sitting next to me, Stone Phillips (not a big fan of live TV) would interact with me in that chatty way anchors do. Stone decided that rather than react naturally to the returns from the different time zones, he would make a comment about how one hostage-negotiator cop character in the TV story reminded him of Dr. Phil. He honed the line to the point that he used the exact same words for each time zone. “I think the Dr. Phil line is working, don’t you?” he asked, as though this was his reporting-from-the-rooftops-of-London moment. “Sure, Stone.” I said. “It’s working great.”
And on GE and bin Laden:
In early 2002, our team was in Saudi Arabia covering regional reaction to September 11. We spent time on the streets and found considerable sympathy for Osama bin Laden among common citizens at the same time that the Saudi government expressed frustration that Americans seemed not to consider it an ally in the war on terror. We tracked down relatives of the September 11 hijackers, some of whom were deeply shocked and upset to learn what their family members had done. We wanted to speak with members of Osama bin Laden’s family about their errant son’s mission to bring down the Saudi government and attack the infidel West. We couldn’t reach the bin Ladens using ordinary means, and the royal family claimed that it had no real clout with the multibillion-dollar bin Laden construction giant that built mosques, roads, and other infrastructure all over the world.
But GE had long done business with the bin Ladens. In a misguided attempt at corporate synergy, I called GE headquarters in Fairfield, CT, from my hotel room in Riyadh. I inquired at the highest level to see whether, in the interest of bringing out all aspects of an important story for the American people, GE corporate officers might try to persuade the bin Ladens to speak with Dateline while we were in the kingdom. I didn’t really know what to expect, but within a few hours I received a call in my hotel room from a senior corporate communications officer who would only read a statement over the phone. It said something to the effect that GE had an important, long-standing, and valuable business relationship with the Bin Laden Group and saw no connection between that relationship and what Dateline was trying to do in Saudi Arabia. He wished us well. We spoke with no bin Laden family member on that trip.
But they sure do a swell job of staging the news.
And no one–no one– does tartan plaid better than Stone Phillips.
***
NBC reacts:
NBC News wasn’t impressed by this or any of Hockenberry’s other claims.
“It’s unfortunate that John Hockenberry seems to be so far out of touch with reality,” an NBC spokesperson said. “The comments are so utterly absurd, we will have no further comment.” Another NBC executive said it didn’t sound like Zucker, who was promoted out of the news division and was at one time “Today” executive producer.
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Ummmmmm, a conservative needs no explanation why!
Creative thinking at major corporations is NOT encouraged!? Why am I not surprised?!
NBC
UBL
Abbreviations united in a common cause
Just think, they kept the “A” team at NBC & stocked MSNBC with the leftovers. LOL
The Soros:
Narrated
Bucolic
Chorus? Naah, don’t question they’re integrity or impartiality, ever.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298207,00.html
Networks don’t want interactive news because that means they’re exposed for the buffoons they really are.
Liberal bias & sunlight? Noo noo noo.
My Corp. suit card beats your publics right to know card every time and..don’t be rock’n the gravy boat…Jackson.
Can ANYONE remember the last time NBC stood for integrity and non-partisan news?
We know why they don’t like live: you can’t invent the news when the audience is seeing it at the same time as the producers and anchors. They need time to bend the facts to fit their few pitiful ideas.
Can you say “we manufacture buggy whips”?
That’s why I rarely watch tv news…20 minutes of commercials, 35 minutes of junk/sensationalism and 5 minutes of news, per hour.
Why do you think I get my news from blogs and talk radio?
Can’t remember the last time I watched TV news – have a hard time remembering when I last watched Fox. And it’s been years since I even looked at a newspaper. Everything I need to know I can find on the internet, without all the BS.
“It’s unfortunate that John Hockenberry seems to be so far out of touch with reality,” an NBC spokesperson said.
Hockenberry confirms why I no longer trust the MSM. Like most here I find I can get facts by a few clicks on the internet. Of course one has to be very careful whose facts you believe. One reason I continue to come to this site is the well reasoned analysis with links to the facts to make that analysis along with corrections when new facts come to light.
All Network are run by ossified executive drones. The suits are well-fitted to hide their fat pasty, amorphous frames. I guess they are emulating the non-thinking segment of America that watches their crap programming.
Tonight’s News (by segment):
“Democrats we like”
“We hate Bush but love Huckleberry since a Democrat can beat him and he’s a Democrat anyway and we can bash Christians.”
“Idiot Celebrity loves Democrats”
“Another Idiot Celebrity visits Chavez – denounces Bush”
“Skank bares all”
“Another skank divorces still another idiot Celebrity – parties all night”
“Katie interviews ‘Skank of the Year’”
“All business is evil”
“Sports – Eurotrash sports star arrives with Skank wife, will re-make American sports scene”
“Editorial – Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/Blackwater, America should be France”
John Hockenberry has always been a class act. The same can’t be said for MSNBC. Its documentaries are a one-trick pony of sex crimes and prison life, numbingly repeated over and over again. I can’t even imagine that network doing the report on Islamofascism in Europe that Fox did.
Interesting to hear from someone that was on the inside of the network during the last few years events … but those at the top still can’t accept that to most of us the peacock stands for:
No
Body
Cares
their response is so immature, i have to wonder if NBC is being run by children.
Just because they’re of adult age doesn’t mean they ever grew up…
Nothing
But
Crapola
network
In other words we can’t deny nor refute his accusations so let’s call him names and insult him.
Gotcha.
like half of the above comments?
I thought the Bush family only had dealings with the Bin Ladens?
sarc off
No. Not at all.
What’s NBC?
That, AJ, is the right question…..
As one of those who sent this to MM, I figure I’ll briefly weigh in just to say that it makes me smile to see a former member of the MSM, especially NBC, roasting the network.
Umm…NBC takes a pretty high and mighty attitude about the situation..even kissing Zucker’s arse…Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t ABC overtake the nightly news rankings..and hasn’t GMA cut that Today Show lead way down? Their other news divisions are hemmoraging and what is there to watch on NBC? All this on Zuckers watch!
Michelle, I didn’t even know Phillips was still on the air other than as the butt of an occasional SNL joke
This illustrates exactly why network news and series have lost millions of viewers: move along folks, nothing to see here. They look down on us and pander to what they think is America. This was Prez Clinton’s attitude too, which led to 9/11 and to a rejection by many, like me, of their liberal views.
AlohaGuy said:
Hey, at least those Eutes got married before they started cranking out the kids. That’s major bonus points in my book! (Unlike the latest American pop-tarts gracing the rags at the checkout counter.)
Can we put ol’ Sarky in charge?
Jeff Zucker is the psuedo intellectual leader of NBC Hindenburg…Oh, the humanity.
It would be great to seen Nbc relocate to Moscow.
It would be great to see Nbc relocate to Moscow!
Instead of a show called “To catch a predator”, they should have “To catch a real journalist.”
Could it simply be that NBC sucks because they do not report the news as news, but op/ed all stories to their leftist slant. As well as lacking profssional journelistic integrity?
Shame on you all.All you rednecks want is real, truthful,unbiased news.Get with the program people,all this talk about elections,illegal aliens,the war,underpaid workers having to pay for deadbeat’s insurance is just so yesterday,ya know.We need to hear the really important stuff like; what’s happening with Lindsy Whatsername,Britney”s underwear(when she wears them) and let not forget PARIS(and I don’t mean France).Hah, you’re not going to get that kind of reporting at Michelle Malkin,or Hot Air…You all know I’m kidding,right?
good grief…this sounds like the music industry.
Get the Fork, it’s DONE!!
The first thing that strikes me about Hockenberry is his unexamined political bias as illustrated by his street theater nonsense about carrying a mock bomb around on his back until it “detonated.” It falsely assumes the US targeted Iraqi civilians. In real life, the Iraqi civilians came out in the streets to watch us bomb Saddam’s palace across the river in Baghdad, safe in the knowledge we would never bomb civilian areas. The Brits in the Blitz had no such confidence that the Nazis would not bomb civilian areas and kept in their bunkers.
Hockenberry might consider changing his street theater so that it reflected reality: Iraqi civilians randomly imprisoned, tortured, or executed to maintain Saddam’s reign of terror.
Hockenberry’s struggle with the standards exec at NBC sounds a lot like the Hollywood screenwriters struggle with the Hays Office and its Production Code back in the 1930s. Hockenberry’s effort to get fresh reporting through the bowels of the NBC corporate bureaucracy sounds very much like the old Hollywood screenwriters’ effort to get fresh and edgy screenplays through the studio system, only to have them converted into banal pap.
Just like TV knocked down the movie industry, I suspect that the Internet will knock down TV. TV had the advantage of lower production values than movie studios. The Internet has the advantage of much lower production values than TV, allowing solo authors to publish their stuff. Technology is removing the barriers to entry for the common man to the media and demolishing the monopoly the stale, stuffy, orthodox liberal bureaucrats hold on the public forum.
Let the creative destruction begin.
Hockenberry’s got it wrong. The problem with the news business isn’t a failure to use new technology, or to explore the fringes, or even to keep the error rate low (although all those things are true, of course), but rather a simple failure to tell the truth and not let the received narrative determine the story. The problem is simply that we can’t trust journalists, so why should we pay attention.
Hockenberry’s complaints illustrate this perfectly: they boil down to anger about NBC refusing to let his preferred liberal narrative color his stories. As Tantor points out, his silliness with the exploding confetti is just one example of this.