Get ready. Marjorie Margolies Mezvinksy, the former Congresswoman from the 13th Congressional district in Pennsylvania, is days away from announcing a comeback. With the backing of President Bill Clinton, the lawmaker-turned professor, and former network correspondent, will seek the seat that will be vacated by Congress member Allyson Schwartz who wants to be Pennsylvania Governor. Three other candidates are seeking the nomination.
It happened on the Jim Braude and Margery Eagan show on WGBH in Boston. CNN Reporter John King apologized for the bogus story reported below during the terror crisis in Boston. It was certainly due and it was thorough.
Just wanted to give you the update.
Jim and Margery are the only male-female talk team on Boston Radio. Jim also has his own TV show on NECN. It’s interesting that King picked the station, which has a wide reach in New England.
It’s been nagging at me for five days now. I try to reconcile the situation, but I can’t. I value and cherish our first amendment rights, but there are limits and responsibilities.
At the time of the bombings in Boston, I was in the city working with reporters, anchors, and management at two properties of NBC Universal’s Sports Group, including New England Cable News, the largest regional cable news network in the U.S. Watching the story unfold, and witnessing the reaction of the citizens of the Boston area, was an exercising in examining fear, anxiety and undaunted courage.
A few days later, I returned to Philadelphia.
What happened at that point was an episode that was hardly courageous, and extremely unwise. When CNN, and others reported that there was a suspect in custody on Thursday of last week, the people of New England were relieved. The Associated Press wire service and Fox News followed with the same story. The CNN reporter John King reported the story and Wolf Blitzer broadcast it with energy and abandon.
The story was wrong.
A lot of people have criticized the cable networks in different ways, but really got to the point which is all about public safety. While NBC, ABC, and CBS didn’t fall for the bait, CNN continued its report, until it was denied by the local and federal law.
CNN backtracked, and never really offered contrition.
What’s the real point of all of this? For hours, the people of New England were led to believe there was a suspect. And therein lies the danger of taking reporting risks in the middle of a civil emergency. Was it worth it? Did the CNN report lead people to let down their guard, and believe the crisis was over?
Obviously, John King’s sources were not correct, nor was the casual backing off by the network on a story fraught with dangers, especially the danger of thinking the crisis might have been over.
I’ve said for years that information is dangerous business. Nowhere is it more dangerous than during a terrorist attack, or any emergency where good, solid information is so important to the public’s well being.
And then I remember the words of Blitzer during the Newtown massacre, when he kept using saying, “We hear.” “We hear”. “We hear that the death toll is…
We hear that…” How many people did he scare on that nightmarish day?
In the news business, we don’t casually “hear” in the middle of a clear and present danger. In the news business, we report, not based on hearsay, but on facts.
NBC, CBS and ABC obviously preferred to be second on the story and correct than first and wrong.
That is what credibility is all about. Being first, with bad information, can be deadly.
CNN should investigate how sources are used and whether John King shared his sources with his bosses.
We can be polished, charismatic and smooth. But our credibility is based not only on the truth, but our compassion for the people we serve.
Just finished my new book, which will be released by Running Press worldwide late summer. It’s a dramatic look at the Beatles rise to the top, and it has some real surprises. More on that later. But February 7th is an important day.
It was 49 years ago , Feb 7, 1964, that the Beatles landed in New York. Things have not been the same since. Two days later, they appeared on the first of three Ed Sullivan shows. Their performance, live and in black and white, was stunning. They were such a great stage band. Their renditions guaranteed that they would return in the summer of 1964 for the most spectacular tour in music history. I would travel to every stop on their first two American tours.
But a few days after the Sullivan show, I stood on the tarmac at Miami International Airport as they arrived for a few days off. Behind me glass was shattering from the force of young girls and boys who had filled the terminals. They walked off the plane with the other passengers, and a few hours later, I attended a rather small news conference with them at a Miami Beach hotel. It was strange. Only a few reporters showed up. Most of the press corps viewed them as an aberration, a bunch of long-haired pretenders who didn’t have much talent.
I was perplexed. Was this some freak show? What did those kids know that I didn’t know? It was all weird and yet there was a sense oi change, but I didn’t know where it was going.
At the News Conference, John Lennon was very funny. Paul was Paul – smoothie all the way. The other two were quiet. I didn’t know what to ask. Finally I said, “What do you hope to accomplish?” Was that a stupid question, but I never interviewed a rock band and especially one with all that hair. Lennon responded, “Hope to accomplish…are you daft?” Daft I learned later was a British expression for being crazy. I replied, “No, are you”. And he said with a neat smile, “Yes, thats why I’m so successful and why I was kicked out of school.” I said, “Really.” He looked at the other guys, and said, “This guy is a nerd from the fifties.”
He would repeat that comment when I started traveling across North America with them in the Summer. It was a magic relationship. They loved my intensity. I smiled at their comments. We were total opposites, but it worked.
Did I know that they would be legends? Absolutely not. But a wise person, who saw them on Sullivan told me so. My Mother, who would pass away later that year, summed it up. “Larry”, she said, “Larry, who told you that Elvis would be a star.”
“You did Mom.”
“These boys will be bigger than Elvis.”
She never lived to hear my reports from the Beatles tour. But she was right. They became bigger than Elvis and just about every one who recorded music over the last 49 years.
Moral of the story. Never minimize the news you cover. You never know when a story that looks strange, weird and unimportant, will turn out so big that it woud change your career and your outlook on life. Its also a story that eventually brought me to Philadelphia, where I would spend the last 47 years.
Forget about the January First deadline. The amazing, unbearable, and insane political paralysis of the fiscal cliff has already ruined the holiday shopping season for retailers. It is the worst holiday shopping season since 2008, and you remember what 2008 was like. You can blame it on Republicans, or Democrats and certainly Speaker John Boehner appears grossly incompetent. Either that, or his party loyalists have sent him grimly under the bus. Either that, or Eric Cantor is up to his old tricks, He was the only man smiling after the great embarrassment to the speaker. On the Democratic side, why didn’t Nancy Pelosi offer her own compromise. Where has she been during all of this? How about Grover Norquist, the non-elected power broker. He is real red. white, blue, and green, as in fat cast cash. And Harry Reid? A political giant he is not.
Where does the White House stand? Does the President have the innards to argue his case more vigorously to the American people? He seems, so far at least, kind and gentle, while the 38 House members who are holding up the train, are not going to compromise any time soon. The President, who appears to admire the Abe Lincoln playbook. might also study the hammer-like styles of LBJ, or The Gipper.
CORBETT – ON THE ROPES?
Sources in the Pa. Republican party say that Governor Tom Corbett has three months to make an image turnaround, before potential Democratic candidates go on the attack and seriously threaten a second term.. Corbett is plagued by very poor press relations, an inability to stay on message, and reports of what are legal but questionable trips provided by campaign supporters. It is not unusual for Governors to face mid-term blues but Corbett has several problematic issues: major cutbacks in education funding, a failure to properly tax the natural gas industry , and his uncharacteristically extreme right-wing stand on gun control and Obamacare.
Personally, the Governor is a fairly warm and effusive personality, but the public rarely sees that side of him. It t0ok him almost two years to appear on news/talk programs in the Philadelphia area. He first appeared on my Voice of Reason program in the summer of this year, a full 18 months into his term.
In truth, the Governor’s imagery, and approval ratings are his own fault. He needs to fix those problems fast if he really wants a second term.
Final note: I’m not getting into his decisions as Attorney General in the Penn State case. Until proven otherwise, there is no evidence whatsoever that he conducted himself inappropriately.
