Making The News

if you want to check with them and see if they're interested cities what happens at 2100g ABC notebook making the news television news is the way most of us learn about what's happening in our world and not very many people know how it really works what goes on behind the scenes who decide what you see on the air what's the latest in technical Wizardry we'll try to answer these and many more of your questions as we take a look at how the news is made I'm Peter Jennings and this is ABC notebook making the news in preparing this broadcast ABC research conducted a nationwide survey of young people to find out how they perceive television news our survey found that nearly 70 percent consider television news their most important source of information and with that in mind we invited a group of young people to join me in three colleagues ABC News president he's our boss vice president and executive producer of Weston and correspondent Lynn shur to ask questions about television news and in responding we went behind the scenes at our ABC News bureaus to illustrate the process of news production how do you position your reporter to cover world news we have a 24-hour a day operation we call the assignment desk and those are people who are based in not only New York but Washington all around the world and it is their job to read the wires to read the cables that our correspondents send in all the time and to the telephones and just have a very good news sense what they do is after they get that information is they begin to move correspondence and Crews to be in position either for stories that are breaking right now or in anticipation of stories one of the inputs to that assigned desk is what the evening news or World News Tonight the broadcasts want and need and so um part of what I did was to move Peter Jennings to the northern part of India to be in position before the Indians and the bangladeshis went to war some of the pieces that he did uh were a perfect example of of an assignment desk moving correspondence based on on journalism and a good guess people here tend to remember the war with Pakistan in 1965. a day before it everybody was saying War would not occur this is Peter Jennings ABC News in Calcutta we have a lot of our reporters who are here in New York or in Washington but we have bureaus all around the world and we change them a lot depending on what the nature of the news is so that if tomorrow there was a riot in South Africa until now we have a bureau there which is not as large as it used to be but as man so that we can get people right to the scene quickly every weekday morning ABC News bureaus around the world are linked via a conference telephone call with ABC News here in New York this is where the news Executives of the producers are told of what is happening in various other parts of the world what stories are breaking Los Angeles this morning uh there were 20 arrests [Music] preliminary list or the lineup as we call it is developed for the nightly broadcast as the day progresses that list can very well change as world events dictate next question something happens at four o'clock and you're I have to write it out and you have to have the film processed how are you able to do this could you give us step-by-step okay well something happens at four o'clock really means you're happening before two hours and a half before the broadcast then it depends very much where it's happening in the world but you did use one phrase that is no longer important to us because we no longer use film in television so we don't have to go to some strange city in the world and find a film processing lab any longer because we now have videotape which is instant and we can now satellite from almost anywhere in the world at very short notice as all of the World by now must know there is a new Princess of Wales Diana Spencer and Charles Philip Arthur George have been married the Soviet and the American delegations have spent the day before the summit telling anyone who will listen that they are here in good faith it all seems inevitable that these tenacious revolutionaries who first defeated the French would eventually defeat the United States that with satellites today live coverage from anywhere in the world is almost commonplace television signals are beamed up to one of the many satellites orbiting 22 000 miles above the Earth the signal is then relayed down to a satellite receiving dish on Earth where it is processed recorded on videotape edited and put on the air go forward it takes a television signal less than half a second to travel the 47 000 miles from London up to the satellite and down to New York okay let's say a story breaks at four o'clock let's would you like to pick the place and we'll work it through Mexico we're Mexico okay and Lynn you're the reporter on the scene in Mexico and and there has been this enormous industrial explosion which we had recently in Mexico and it happened at four o'clock in the afternoon what's the first thing you're going to do I'm going to get a real quick understanding of what happened polling the office means I get the executive producer of World News Tonight he'll be on one end and I'm going to say here's what just happened what do you want me to do about it if this occurred in Mexico uh and and Lynn is covering the editorial side the next thing is finding does anybody have any pictures or any survivors or any interviews or anything that already exists and now it becomes a job of coordinating of getting Lynn in touch with those resources so that she can work them together into a report which can then be satellited back to us in New York so I have looked and seen this enormous explosion I've convinced them again I'll call in and I will say to the executive producer deserves two and a half minutes and the executive producer will say to me how about a minute and a half all right we may say two and a half it really depends a major event that we're all talking about the same event which is the Mexico City uh petrochemical blast the the magnitude of it the damage the number of people who were injured or killed the economic implications and the political implications were so great that two and a half minutes was probably what what we would have done the real question is For Heaven's Sake will you get it in on time or do I have to start changing the content of my of the broadcast because we have a lineup and it lists the stories what what the running order is to be and how long to run if everything goes marvelously correct throughout the day why that lineup we make it noon can stand until 6 30 at night but here comes Lynn Shore with her Mexico City fire that's out the window and worse possibly is that she's not ready to go at 6 30. well standing in the control room we're talking into Peter's ear saying make it look professional you can do it stay cool it'll be along at any moment what we start to do is we start to slip it so what we're doing and we're talking into that little things here from the control room saying the Mexico City piece isn't ready go to Story number two you know what we're doing we're in severe overload here we're going we're going to delete shell from the second segment we'll talk you through this we're going to move Betsy Aaron up into the fourth segment and we're going to put baseball back in after the last commercial he was going to give him he's going to give friends think about at the same time he's got to be preparing himself to know as much about the story at a distance as Lynn does on the scene because at 6 29 30 we go in the air at 6 30. at 6 29 and 30 seconds something may happen to the satellite between here and Mexico City and I will have to add live the entire story 20 seconds there one over two on the top okay I think that's a buy if that had a token 156. no we're not switching segments McCarthy's 127. Trout's 121 so we're all within shooting uh time on the line here we go folks nine eight seven six five four three two one headed [Music] from ABC this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings good evening it was 5 42 in the morning outside Mexico City one witness said it was like the sun had come out early first there was one explosion at the natural gas plant then another and another before it was over more than 200 people were dead in more than 500 injured since our young viewers came to see us a powerful earthquake has struck Mexico City thousands of people were killed and the story was of such importance that our evening broadcast originated entirely from Mexico City and our coverage followed the same procedure we showed you earlier everyone worked together to get the story quickly and accurately a global generation that danced and sang to the music of John Lennon mourned his death today Marvin Gaye whose smooth voice and sensual singing style made him one of the most popular Soul artists of the past two decades was killed in Los Angeles today although he was only 33 years old John Belushi had already established himself as a major American comic actor let's say somebody dies at 4 30. and your news is on 6 30. how do you get together all the stuff about this person's life in two hours I will give you the best example of exactly that which was when Princess Grace died um I don't remember exactly what time but I think it was suspiciously close to 4 30. I remember it was quite late in the day we set in motion a very very capable team of people to start doing things like calling up people that have rights to Motion Pictures and getting copies of the films that she was in the next thing we did was we somebody punched into a computer Princess Grace's name so that we could see what our own ABC videotape or film Library had on that person in other words there were times she had made appearances that ABC News had covered and we save all that and certainly within an hour we had pretty much of what we wanted and and I wrote it and somebody cut it and we got it on the air in time ABC's Lynn shur now looks back at Princess Grace who of course millions of Americans knew is Grace Kelly her life is a Hollywood movie Queen was a fairy tale by loved by everyone's Motion Picture Idols but off screen she created an even greater fantasy tapping a schoolgirl's dream and a whirlwind Romance by marrying The Prince and going off to live in a castle recently she told one interviewer that her life was not really a fairy tale that she was like all contemporary women trying to cope I'd like to be remembered as a as a decent human being and a caring one lyncher ABC News New York how much of your own opinion are you allowed to put into the broadcast Ah that's a good question um you try not to let your own opinions get in the broadcast but that doesn't mean to say that we all don't have opinions um you take a look at four people we're as different as you are all different from one another I think that most reporters um yeah train themselves over the years to leave their opinions at the typewriter it's a great system of checks and balances in television the executive producer in the case of our watches reporters very carefully all of us to make sure that our own opinions don't get on the screen right well I think also we have learned that because we have access to people's minds in their homes that's where you watch television every night what we say and what we report has to be done with great responsibility and so we set up a series of editorial checks the correspondent on the scene of course is a trained journalist the producer is a trained journalist their effort is looked at when it comes down by producers and editors who are trained journalists so there is a system in which we can check to be sure that the biases we may have and we all have biases are filtered out next question who have you ever been involved involved in a national story then now looking back on you feel is a mistake to have reported my gut reaction is certainly not I I don't think there's anything I've covered that I would say to you oh my God we never should have covered that I think we have our excesses and I think we sometimes under report things that in retrospect are more important or or have become more important let me just add one thing to what Lynn said before that the the most difficult decisions that we ever have to make when you say you know what have we ever done that we regret is every once in a while a story comes along that calls into question the security of the country and we are all citizens and Patriots just like you are and just like everybody else and we love the country and we also love the freedom of the press at this country grants to all of us and with that goes not only a responsibility but it goes as this terrible dilemma that you occasionally have when you you have a story that you know is is correct or you've done everything that you can possibly do to assure that it's correct and some high official sometimes the president United States but a lot of times one of his Representatives will call you and tell you that if you go with that story you're going to endanger the lives of people or you're going to endanger the security of the country and that it's unpatriotic for you to do that but there has been a national debate about censorship on Grenada and the coverage of the invasion has led to the most bitter argument between the media and the White House in many years while it may not seem credible to some of you it was indeed the concern that we had for the safety of uh of uh newsmen and uh and media television as well as radio and and print media and at that time you have to make this awful decision between the government's power to call something secret which is merely embarrassing to them and the people's right to know what their government is doing and on the other hand the very necessary secrecy that certain government activities should should enjoy and none of us want to be involved in costing lives or endangering the security of the country and so those are the ones that are invariably the most the most difficult those are the ones that we go right down to two minutes before broadcast before deciding whether to go with the story or not Sean's teams of violence helped convey our message to the people off as the producer there is no question that there are certain events in which the violence is very much part of the story a the aftermath of a bomb going off in a Beirut suburb and seeing what happens when that bomb exploded can only be told in one way and it is you have to show it well there is something that every Lebanese man and woman fears more than any shelling it is the carbon and yet another one exploded this morning in a working-class district of West Beirut just one picture will tell you how Wretched Man can be to his fellow man there was this wounded girl and there were at least 14 people killed more than 80 others wounded it is this kind of random but pointed violence which keeps Lebanon in turmoil on the other hand if you don't show those pictures in some context if you don't make sense out of why you're showing those pictures then then that is a mistake and I think we've become far more sensitive television is a very young business and we are learning almost every day and what we did back in the 60s was a lesson we carried forward to the 70s and what we learned during the Vietnam war is something we've carried forward to Beirut and just in terms of War again I go back to what I said earlier there are times when violence has to be shown in order to make the point of the story gosh a lot of questions in word of the ideas for non-hit lorries come from everybody who's working on or for the broadcast has some ideas that we will do a story on um on oh you know pick the subject which may not be for today but maybe for six weeks from now and we'll work uh six weeks ahead and even longer so that process is is is going on all the time and everybody has some kind of input in into it most of us like from time to time to be able to step back and say I don't want to go cover a fire I don't want to go cover an explosion let me go work for a week or so on a little nice little feature we call those feature pieces and and it is a great um change of Rhythm to go from rushing around and covering breaking news to being able to step back and go cover something that has nothing to do with anything that you've been doing do you change the stories if you think that um kids are going to be viewing them at 6 30 around dinner time or if adults will be viewing them I used to use and three criteria for determining what we would put on the Evening News the first one was is the is my world safe literally does it mean it does this story affect the world and then is my country safe I mean is how does that affect me here at home my nation my city my hometown the final criteria we use was okay with all of that then what's happened in the last 24 hours that made my life better in some ways if you were listening to the radio this morning at 10 50 eastern time you probably heard the famine relief song We Are the World there Comes A Time when we heed a certain call when the world must come together as one [Music] it was one of those special moments when much of the world did indeed come together as one hundreds gathered on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York to sing along and it wasn't just the USA for Africa the music was also played simultaneously in at least 25 other countries as well as on The Voice of America one of the verses from the song heard around the world on this Good Friday says let us realize that a change can only come when we stand together as one in many places all over the globe that happened today Gary Shepard ABC News Los Angeles we hope that you found this brief behind the scenes look at television news interesting and informative those of us who cover the news think it is thank you for joining us I'm Peter Jennings that's our report [Music] okay we'll go to the first page [Music] okay live at the top please live at the top but go for it there's no other wild line thank you 15.9 if you'll play that back for us on 58 we're going to set a box over this video all right okay okay foreign