This city’s best known TV news anchor was recently arrested on assault charges. I wrote a blog last week about not judging him until the facts are in. But the issue today is whether or not his arrest qualifies as “news”. There is no question that it does to every media property in this city except its largest daily newspaper and I and my media brethren feel a) the paper made an incomprehensible decision to not run the story and b) unfairly and now publicly judged by them because we aired the story. He is innocent until proven guilty but that is not the point. Police felt there was enough evidence to not only charge him but keep him in jail over Christmas until a bail hearing could be held. Everyone in the city knows who he is. Even his own television station reported it in a succinct, factual matter and released a statement saying he would be on leave. It was the ethical, credible and right thing to do to acknowledge it and move on.
On Saturday the paper’s Editor-In-Chief wrote an editorial in response to the criticism he has been receiving about not reporting on the story. The fact that readers are complaining is enough to prove that it IS a story and now there’s further proof, since the Editor has taken up half a page to explain his position. He mused about whether the paper would have covered a similar story if the Mayor had been involved and his answer was, “Probably”. I don’t understand why he would even say that. We are not fools. You don’t need to be in media to know that if the Mayor was charged with assault it would be front page, top-of-the-fold, headline news.
The Editor also defended his paper because it did send a reporter to the court appearance and that reporter did write a story. But it wasn’t printed or put online. Since when does a newspaper expect credit for “covering” a story it doesn’t publish? The filed-but-nixed story was put into the editorial as if that’s proof of something.
Print media have traditionally thumbed their noses at broadcast news, both radio and television. They probably have historical reasons for this but those reasons are now outdated. I wish I could tell you how many times a newspaper – any newspaper – has printed “a local radio station” instead of the actual call letters. I make it a point of professionalism to credit a newspaper by name when I’m using their exclusives, on air and online. Not every station in this market does that, granted. But not every newspaper treats us as if we have a legitimate role to play in the city.
None of this defense of the alleged assault as news is meant to bring harm or shame to the news anchor. It’s to point out a tremendous inconsistency in our local paper. When the anchor’s co-anchor Kathy Meuller left /A to work for the Canadian Red Cross, that was news to the Free Press. When /A changed to CTV London, that warranted their coverage. For goodness sake, when Bob Smith took over and then ended the evening newscasts on Rogers TV it was deemed worthy each time. So do broadcasters matter or don’t they?
Here is the litmus test: Replace our CTV London news anchor with CTV Toronto’s dinnertime news anchor Ken Shaw and trade The Free Press for The Toronto Sun, the Free Press’s flagship publication – tell me they wouldn’t mention it. Of course they would. This decision doesn’t make any sense and the explanation doesn’t wash. I don’t know what the story behind the story is and perhaps I never will. But this attempt to explain so-called policy is just making the whole thing more baffling to the rest of the market’s media. You simply can’t hold up a duck and tell everyone it’s not a duck and expect us to agree. It’s a damn duck.