Check it Out!: Great Reporters on What It Takes to Tell the Story

6. COOCHY-COOCHY-COO

“How John DeLorean gets off—at eleven ” news tease when the auto magnate was acquitted on drug charges COOCHY-COOCHY-COO hmilking the babyh W hen news breaks out, we break in.” I always used to chuckle when I heard that station break news promo on a local TV station. I’d get a picture in my mind of news escaping from some place or other, and of reporters trying to jimmy a door open to get to it. I heard Dan Rather say it recently about the Republican convention, as if there would actually be some news breaking out at that highly orchestrated event. In fact, there hasn’t been any actual news breaking out of a political convention for decades. But I digress. There seems to be a trend in news today to emphasize the sheer excitement of the medium. Stations are always giving us live reports (instead of dead ones?). Interviews are called exclusive, if for no other reason than that no other reporters bothered to show up. There seems to be a belief out there that news can be sold to the consumer as important, whether or not it is, just by giving it a special cachet—which is defined in my dictionary as (among other things) “a little wafer enclosing a badtasting medicine.” That wafer often comes in the form of a tease—that is, a promotional announcement that entices you to think that you are going to miss something important if you don’t stay tuned. I hate teases. So does Andy Rooney. 6 “ 72 g check it out! Well, you have to have headlines on stories to attract viewers’ attention , and that is the big argument downstairs at CBS News right this minute. You can bet it’s the big argument at the newspaper. How big should the headline be? How titillating should the headline be? Should it be factual or should it be just tease? A tease to get people to read the story. In the Times, it’s factual. In the Daily News, it’s a tease. Television news, network news, is still at war with itself over how much should be tease and how much should be fact—and unfortunately, in the last ten years, they have gone too heavily toward the tease. I am put off in a major way when I am told Tuesday night about the big news story I’m going to get tomorrow, Wednesday. If it’s news, goddamnit, give it to me today. I don’t want it tomorrow, because it’s history then. History, schmistery. The whole idea of teases is—you guessed it— ratings. Teases come in all shapes and sizes. Some begin days before a story actually airs. This happens especially during ratings “sweeps” periods . They go something like this: “Information that could save your life— a special series all next week on News at Five.” Now, you may not have even been aware that your life was in danger—or, if so, from what. It doesn’t really matter, just so long as you’re scared enough to say to yourself , “I’d better watch that.” They don’t even give a hint about the actual topic, because to do so might eliminate some potential viewers. If they say it’s about car safety and you don’t drive, you won’t care. If it’s about medical treatments and you’re not sick, you won’t care. But if it’s about saving your life and you don’t want to die, you’ll care. Get the idea? World’s Most Notorious Tease Debunked—Film at Eleven One of the most notorious teases is still talked about industry-wide, years after it happened. It occurred in the 1970s, in the very early days of so-called “happy talk” news, a creation of ABC-owned local TV stations and the brainchild of news executive Al Primo. So the story goes, a homeless man fell asleep on the railroad tracks, and a train struck him and killed him. In the process, the man’s penis was severed. KGO sent a film crew. (This was before videotape, and the reason for the cliché “film at coochy-coochy-coo g 73 eleven.”) The film, a close-up of the penis lying by the track, ran in a tease that went something like, “A sick joke, or a tragedy—film at eleven...