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 OurBlook interview with Lisa Weaver, former CNN International correspondent
What do you see as the future for the once-dominant Big Three network news operations ... NBC, CBS, ABC? Will they be going through the same painful transition newspapers are? Is it good or bad for America that while still influential, they have been losing viewers?
LW: I think the Big Three will move more into magazine style or long form television journalism ... or infotainment. News coverage may be outsourced to entities so that the nets are relieved of that cost and investment. For instance, there have been talks for years of CBS News striking a deal with CNN to provide some sort of news coverage package for CBS air. I don't know how conclusive these talks are at this point. My evidence for this is based on conversations with CBS employees during the 2008 Olympic Games coverage in Beijing, during which time I was freelancing for CBS News. But as a trend, it would make a lot of sense for the networks to leave daily and international news coverage up to companies that are properly staffed to do that, instead focusing the on air talent and production resources to long form television. Network TV still delivers a production quality that few others ... including CNN ... can rival. The nets will lose viewers, and in that sense become relevant to more of a niche audience. This is happening to news media across the board. Commanding a majority audience is no longer a realistic goal for any one company, so in that sense the influence of the Big Three will inevitably shift. Hopefully they will continue to pursue an older demographic that has a taste for the conventional news form and investigative journalism.
What do you see as the future for CNN?
LW: Well, this is a big question, and I think it differs slightly depending on whether you're talking about CNN domestic or CNN International. CNN domestic will likely continue to creep toward "edge" and television personalities, in order to keep up with the brash polarization common to most cable news services. Underneath the loudness and self promotion, there is still a great news organization in terms of people and resources. Unlike the Big Three, which know they've lost the audience game, CNN is still trying hard to keep up and surpass Fox (I don't know the latest audience figures), MSNBC, etc. Then for the young demographic CNN is after, I think you will see continued push to get content out on cell phones, RSS feeds, even social media like Facebook and Twitter. A social media expert who recently spoke to class at the University of Iowa mentioned he had been given a tour of CNN, and saw producers in the control booth following Twitter and prompting the show hosts to talk about the tweets. I think the end result of all of this is a faster, more relentless news cycle with less introspection and analysis.
I have to admit a bias for CNN International. I worked for CNNI for 4 years, in that most of my television pieces were geared for that audience. I just think it's more intelligent than CNN domestic, by which I mean the tone and scope of the coverage. There are plenty of very bright, committed people working for both services. I'm going to guess that in a sense, CNNI's future is more secure in that it doesn't have to constantly keep up with anything other than BBC World which is the only other service that really competes at that level. A lot of the developing world still watches television as opposed to iphones. Over the years I've noticed a significant increase in the demand on CNNI for business related news; both London and Hong Kong, CNNI's main production hubs, host business shows. As globalization and inter dependence increases, so will demand for this type of news.
What do you see as the future for Fox News?
LW: Again, to state my personal bias, I worked for Fox for a year and left on my own initiative ... I wasn't fired. I worked for the short-lived Hong Kong bureau in 1997 and 1998, which was essentially established as a way for NewsCorp to cozy up to the Chinese leadership. It wasn't about news, which was a problem for me.
Fox has developed since then into a much more competent news gathering organization, and I've encountered Fox reporters in the field who did not seem to reflect the staunch, smug conservative tone that the network exudes. However, it is what it is, which in my analysis appeals to the sort of anti-intellectual populism that is at a particular high right now in the United States. Looking at Fox and conservative talk radio and certain blogs together as a piece, it makes sense to me that there will be a future for Fox. And in fact even more so, in that Fox doesn't really have to shoulder the costs of serious international news coverage because they don't do very much of it. Most of the news coverage is domestic, and in the form of live shots ... as opposed to produced taped reports, or packages. It's not news production so much as talking heads, and there's a place for that.
What do you see as the future for specialty news programs such as "60 Minutes" or "48 Hours?"
LW: I think these will continue. One sign of this is the fact that Dan Rather and Ted Koppel have both branched off into news magazine formats. Even Christiane Amanpour of CNN is seen pretty rarely on breaking news these days ... she has her own show. The big names in on-camera reporting seem to recognize that long form is where it's at, and of course they have the clout to command the resources necessary to do it well. Talking specifically about "60 Minutes," I've noticed over the years that fewer of the segments are serious. Infotainment has creeped in. And my rough recollection is that "48 Hours" was never all that serious in the first place. So even in long form, what sells to a domestic audience in particular are stories ... human stories with some sort of news value ... but not news in the hard investigative sense so much.
What do you see as the future for local TV news programs?
LW: I think local TV is actually quite relevant for a lot of people, and it isn't going anywhere. It does struggle with cutbacks in the newsroom and fewer people doing more things. Without doing research on the question, my guess is the demographic for regularly viewing local TV on a television set is older. To get younger people, it has to get content onto websites and mobile devices and I'm not sure to what extent that is really happening. I would add that local TV is often a part of local media groups ... pooling video, text, etc. from local TV stations and newspapers (or online news websites) into one local "mega" news company. This type of convergence is one way to deal with newsgathering with fewer people, as well as attract advertisers.
Have there been any major changes in recent years at your university in how TV journalism is taught?
LW: Well, I'm very new to the University of Iowa, having been there for one year, so I don't have much of a comparison to the past. But I think for years it's been a very hands-on approach to teaching, so that students learn to produce television in all its forms ... taped packages or reports to in-studio anchors. We're all certainly aware of the need to teach TV for the web, and to make sure students learn both editorial and production skills.
More and more people are watching television online through Hulu. What impact, if any, does this have on TV news or TV programming generally?
LW: Basically it means conventional TV news has to pay attention and think of ways to get itself on outlets like Hulu and Youtube. I found it interesting when Viacom was trying to sue Google (owner of Youtube) some years back for copyright infringement when Viacom content ended up on Youtube. Other media conglomerates, by contrast, chose to see this as an opportunity and made deals to get their content onto Youtube (the BBC comes to mind). What that means is that TV news services are trying to follow the audience to where it views content ... shifting the concept of dedicated "channels" and copyright or intellectual property along the way. So that's the effect .... producing content that can appear on the original "channel" as well as anywhere else.
What do you think of the fact that some Americans say they get their TV "news" from watching Jon Stewart?
LW: I think it reflects a certain disdain and distrust for the presumed objectivity of conventional news and the institutions that produce it. PEW and other polls have been tracking public opinion about news media for the last couple of decades, and have found that since the late 1980s the public trusts the news media less and less. Talk radio, Fox News, MSNBC put the opinion right out there rather loudly because they think the audience will trust a source that admits its bias. Apparently it's OK to be biased, so long as the politics jive with that of the viewer. The audience isn't challenged so much as validated. My point here that Jon Stewart has recognized what all the news organizations have .... he just takes it several steps further.
On a more personal level in terms of what I think, I think it's sad and I don't get it. I don't understand why people perceive journalists' and news organizations efforts to be objective as a cover for an agenda. I think most Americans have little appreciation for what the First Amendment really affords us a society, and they have no idea how hard doing good journalism is.
I like Jon Stewart's show, it definitely has a place, and he is often quite serious and gets beyond his own persona to get to the issues. My point is it should not be a question of "either, or" and hopefully the audience will also appreciate mainstream news.
A lot of news shows and channels now are enlisting viewer participation through submission of video feeds. Your thoughts on citizen journalism for TV?
LW: Frankly, there's a difference between uploading video of a tornado on CNN's "I report" or whatever it's called, and the sort of well-shot, well-edited television report that defines good television journalism. Citizen content should be used as raw material that is edited into something longer, or otherwise contextualized. It is not a substitute for a news organization.
We have a sports news channel in ESPN, an entertainment news channel in E, a couple business news channels, a weather news channel in the Weather Channel, and so on. Do you think there will be more proliferation in the future on cable?
LW: Yes, niche programming is a trend that I think will continue because the costs of delivering content on cable and Internet are low enough that the audience can be small.
(Lisa Weaver is a lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. Her background includes years living and working as a journalist in China, Hong Kong and Indonesia. While working for CNN International’s Beijing Bureau, she was assigned twice to Afghanistan to cover the war there and once to Iraq as an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion. She has bachelor's degrees in East Asian languages and literature (Chinese) and journalism from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree in journalism from University of California-Berkeley.)
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