Should CBS News Be Covering A Story Involving Two Of Their Own?

Sometimes the decisions made in any newsroom or media organization about coverage are straightforward, making it easy to have an opinion. Then, there are times when the issues and questions involved make it difficult to know just what to think. This one falls in the second category. This week I received an e-mail from someone within CBS News who wondered why we had not addressed the fact that CBS broadcasts have not reported on the vicious beating last weekend of two of its employees – Dick Jefferson and Ryan Smith (the Web site did run this story on the attack and you can read it for all the details). Here are parts of the e-mail, name omitted:

Vaughn, I'm surprised PE hasn’t done anything with CBS News’ curious handling of a story involving two of its staffers.

You probably read the email from Dick Jefferson and Ryan Smith circulated yesterday in which they thanked CBS for its help, and CBS News folks for their kind words and thoughts.

Dick and Ryan and several friends were vacationing in the Caribbean last week when the two were attacked in what's been called a “gay-bashing incident.” CBS airlifted them to Miami where both underwent at least one surgery, both had serious head injuries, Ryan perhaps some brain injury and is still in the hospital.

“GMA” did a full piece on the story the other morning, and CBSNews.com has run an item or two.

But even though Dick is a senior producer at the CBS “Weekend News” and Ryan a PS at “48 Hours,” no TV news broadcast at CBS has told the story of their attack, of the brutal crime that happened now a week ago.

Maybe there is no story there to tell, but it is curious that news about two of our own staffers gets coverage elsewhere but not at home.

The inferences here are pretty strong. Does the fact that CBS broadcasts have not reported on this incident say something bigger about the network? Is CBS ignoring this story because of the “gay-bashing” element? Because this involves sensitive issues, I spoke with several senior-ranked individuals within the network and, along with some of my thoughts, here’s a quick look at the thinking involved.

First off, it should be said that nobody to my knowledge is accusing CBS News of acting in an uncaring way toward these two employees. The network had them airlifted to a hospital in Miami and, as the e-mail above notes, they are thankful for the help. The question has to do with why their story has not been aired on CBS.

On some levels, it is an interesting story – these men targeted and beaten nearly to death on a Caribbean resort Island for no other reason than their sexual orientation. Matthew Shepard, brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998, has become a recognizable symbol of hate-crimes after his story was widely reported. The story of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama teenager who disappeared from Aruba last year, continues to dominate many cable news shows. Like Shepard, Jefferson and Smith were, it appears, attacked for being gay. Like Holloway, something terrible happened in a location mostly thought of as vacation paradise. So why not do the story?

Decisions about what is aired are province of the executive producer of each individual program and, if they’re doing their jobs, they must look at every story as a news judgment. Does this story fit my broadcast, fit my idea of news, belong on my show? That’s not to say a story isn’t a story – there are thousands of stories that go untold by every news organization every day. It’s whether a particular story belongs, and many times that is simply a judgment call.

The fact that Jefferson and Smith work for CBS News should be irrelevant when it comes to making that judgment in this case. The question is not does CBS care enough about their employees to cover the story? It is instead: would they do so if this happened to anybody else? Every year, thousands of people are assaulted simply because of their sexual orientation – or their race, or ethnicity or other biases. What makes this particular instance so newsworthy? Because they work for the network?

There probably is an inclination not to a report a story like this about your own people because it's harder to judge it's relative importance and interest. Organizations do not like to report on things about themselves in general simply because there’s an assumption no one else would or should care. For example, The Washington Post covered the murder of David Rosenbaum, a recently retired New York Times reporter, much more aggressively than did the Times.

Judgment calls like this are made all the time. What makes the story of Natalie Holloway more important than that of any other teenager who is missing? Why do we so often hear of little children abducted when they happen to be from white, middle-class families and not those taken from poor minority homes? In that sense, it is almost unfair for CBS to run a story about something terrible that happened to one of their own – why should that get attention when the terrible things happening to others all the time does not?

As it turns out, CBS News will be broadcasting this story. Michael Bass, executive producer of the “Early Show” tells me that Dick Jefferson is meeting with prosecuting authorities today on St. Maarten, the island where the attack took place, and the “Saturday Early Show” intends to will include a report on what develops from that. If other shows believe the story to be newsworthy as it develops, I would trust they will cover it just CBSNews.com did. In any case, I thought the interesting questions raised here were worth exploring and would be interested in hearing your thoughts.