Tim Ortman - News Division

News Division

When more became less:
my experience in the 24-hour news world

News Division

When more became less: my experience in the 24-hour news world

This book is a work of non-fiction. Due to the sensitive nature of the material herein, the names of certain persons, personages, and locations may have been changed to protect subjects confidentiality.

Also, certain incidents have been reconstructed and dialogue reassembled, based on the Authors journals written during the period this book covers, and on his memory of events. Every effort has been made to be accurate and inclusive of facts. There may be instances where names have been omitted from events without intention.

Copyright 2020 by Tim Ortman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For more information, to inquire about rights to this or other works, or to purchase copies for special educational, business, or sales promotional uses, please write to:

Incorgnito Publishing Press
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1651 Devonshire Lan
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Contact@incorgnitobooks.com

FIRST EDITION
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-944589-68-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to disciplined journalists everywhere. Those dutiful men and women whose enduring search for truth, without fear or favor, often in perilous situations, stirs awareness and contemplation.

News coverage by journalists, past and present, generates passionate debate and civil discourse. It elevates our societal consciousness. The deepening and interwoven complexities of an elaborate world demand that same ongoing coverage be fine-tuned, diligent, and omnipresent.

In the face of intense and often misguided skepticism and even cynicism, the courage to provide honest examination and determined reporting is increasingly valuable. Those entrusted with such a vital responsibility must know that their words, voices, endeavors, mettle, and their very presence are needed now more than ever.

Foreword

Its safe to say I am a confessed news junkie. That healthy affliction is the result of working in the business of news gathering for most of my adult life. The News is important to me. The information it regularly supplies me with is fundamental to the kind of up-to-date life I wish to live. I like knowing of the world around me; the world in which I live and the news fulfills that yearning.

The late TV executive Chet Collier enjoyed an illustrious career covering five decades in television entertainment and news, becoming a vice president at both CNBC and FOX News. He once said of the news business, Viewers dont want to be informed; they want to feel informed.

I want to BE informed. I want to know the information I receive is factual and reliable, and that the sources of the information are trustworthy and free from bias. But what was once a journalistic guarantee from our news providers has increasingly come into question. Our news world has been divided into segments and niches. The truth that was once a given is now anything but.

I wrote about my early years in network news in my first book, NEWSREAL: A View Through the Lens When . Its a memoir of the seven illuminating and gripping years during which I lived and worked abroad for NBC News. Over that time, I came of age in the golden age of international network news coverage when three powerful and trusted TV networks dominated the world of broadcast news. NEWSREAL concludes with the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, a story which I covered. It was the last story I covered while based overseas, marking the end of my time as an ex-patriot.

Finality is not always just an end. The completion of that chapter in my life allowed for the beginning of another. This book is about the next chapter. The one undeniable theme that runs through both books, though, is my appetite for information, my need for news.

The News I grew up with and became a part of has undergone a great deal of change. Change in an advanced society like the one in which we live is inevitable and mostly the result of progress. For the news business, that progression has left an indelible mark on the way we receive, consume, interpret, and even believe our news.

I witnessed that change from within. The observations contained on these pages are drawn from stories that I covered. As the aforementioned news junkie, I felt fortunate to be working for The News. To each news story I was assigned, I tried to bring with me experience, enthusiasm, and a sense of awarenessawareness of how both the individual story and the overall industry were developing. Some stories delivered a crushing sadness, and others, a feeling of exhilarating pride. There were some changes to my beloved news business that I questioned as alarming and others that I praised as inspiring.

During this time of change, a major shift came underway as each of the big-three networks was sold. CBS, NBC, and ABC were all acquired by new owners who had a new agenda for their news divisions. This new corporate ownership was accompanied by a greater corporate scrutiny of the bottom-line. The three broadcast news giants had always viewed the publics trust as their single biggest and most valuable investment; it was a trust forged and earned over decades. That old-school thinking became out of step with the new owners focus on higher profits. To them, the news was simply a line item on a budget to be manipulated in the name of increasing profitability. News budgets tightened, jobs disappeared, and offices closed as financial accountability increased. From this viewpoint, long-established standards of broadcast journalism could be viewed as laborious, costly, or even competing with profitability.

The fast-paced news business sped up. The 24-hour news cycle was introduced, then emulated and then found everywhere. A business already driven by deadlines became obsessed with hourly updates. In this constant and expedited war against time, The News suffered casualties. In our hurried-up world, accuracy was accompanied with inaccuracies, lead stories sometimes became misleading, and the unbiased became boring. With so much airtime to fill, the job of reporting eased and allowed for analysis. The once clear and impenetrable separation between fact-based journalism and opinion was demolished like the Berlin Wall. Now, educated opinions can be helpful, entertaining, and worthwhile. But its a dangerous development when opinion is dressed up like The News and masquerades as the truth.

News is now everywhere. We need to look no further than the phone in our hand for the latest breaking story. Yet, I hesitate to place my undying trust in a source of information that is so unregulated, anonymous, and at times misinformed as the internet.

My zeal for the news does not make me a zealot. I recognize that my heightened interest in The News is the result of a news career that spanned four decades and covered five continents. I was fortunate (or perhaps cursed) in this, and have never expected others to share my level of interest in The News. But its because of that enriched perspective that I felt compelled to write this book and share my experiences. And, especially now. The News is under attack. Some of that is well deserved, and some of it self-inflicted. But look closer, beyond the generalizations about fake news and the news media.

Today, the search for truth through information is very much alive and every bit as important as it has always been. Its important that we ARE informed. For, if we are the most powerful nation on Earth, we owe it to each other and the rest of the world to be the most well-informed nation on Earth.