Bad Credit? No Credit? No…Problem?

In a letter to Romenesko today, Lew Koch complains that NBC is promoting "SuperInvestigativeReporter" Lisa Myers while ignoring the work done by her producers:

…it's come to mind several times that Myers had help. How on earth she could dig up a complicated story like the one broadcast tonight, and then turn around and have another detailed story two or three days later? Tonight's story showed line by line expensive dinners for Congresscritters and their staff. Did Myers actually look at those hundreds or thousands of lines. And highlight them? The person credited with blowing the whistle on Bell South -- there she was on camera, responding to...who? Not Myers, or they would have shown the interaction between them. No -- someone else did the interview, someone else went over those hundreds of thousands of lines. But the implication is that Myers is completely in charge. That she did it all.

I asked Deborah Potter, president and executive director of Newslab, who spent 16 years as a network correspondent for CBS and CNN, if she agreed.

"It's definitely true that producers usually don't get credit," she says. "But neither do photographers or all the other people who have something to do with getting something on the air." This is the case, she says, "in all kinds of information businesses – newspapers, radio, any product where the process is collaborative."

Part of the problem, she adds, is the "clutter issue" – most viewers can't be expected to process a number of names with each story. (Think of the movies – how many people actually stay for the credits?) And then there's the question of branding. Viewers identify with and come to see the person onscreen, whether it be Myers or Lara Logan or Anderson Cooper. Even if a producer, editor, or cameraman is doing a significant amount of work, a media outlet doesn't gain much by crediting them. For better or worse, viewers are going to come back for the "SuperInvestigativeReporter" – not the editor toiling away in a back room.

Some shows do credit their producers – "60 Minutes," for example, as well as "The Daily Show." But most are content to foster, unconsciously or not, the idea that the on-air correspondent is doggedly ferreting out the story, and reporting it, all by him- or herself. (I don't mean to imply that they're doing nothing, of course. Many on-air reporters are quite involved in the newsgathering and reporting process. But they don't do everything.)

The Internet, of course, is a different animal – though sites like Slate and Salon operate like newspapers, with uncredited designers and editors lurking behind every byline, most blogs are created and written by a team of one. Not this one, of course: now that I've wrapped up this post, I'm sending it off to my editor, Vaughn Ververs, to get his take. I'll also run it by CBSNews.com Editorial Director Dick Meyer, and perhaps my colleague Hillary Profita. I'll then feed it into a computer system built by web guru Mike Rosellini and an army of developers and designers in order to post it online. Normally, I don't bother to mention all this in a post – we do a pretty good job of patting ourselves on the back over here as it is. But in light of the topic, I figure, this is as good an opportunity as any to offer a little credit where credit is due.