Spotlight on news anchors

What do Australian news presenters think of The Newsroom, and how does it differ from local experiences?

TV Tonight asked anchors of news, current affairs and opinion shows if they were fans of Will McAvoy and the US series. While a number of respondents indicated they hadn’t watched the show, here are those who replied.

LS: Leigh Sales 7:30
PM: Peter Mitchell, Seven News
AE: Anton Enus, World News Australia
CB: Chris Bath, Seven News
PH: Peter Hitchener, Nine News
PMy: Paul Murray, Paul Murray Live

1. Are you a fan of The Newsroom? Tell us if you watch the show religiously, or if you tuned out early on and why.
LS: I watched the first season (all but the final episode) on a long plane trip. I guess I found it okay because I watched most of it, but I must say I’m not inclined to watch season 2 and generally I found the female characters irritating in the extreme. I liked the Jeff Daniels’ character though. One of the things I found off-putting was that the journalists claimed to want to only report the “truth” from now on and it just so happened that the “truth” pretty much always accorded with a left-liberal viewpoint.

PM: I watched all of the first season and enjoyed it, but missed an episode in season two and haven’t yet gone back. I must say though I love the credibility of the opening titles and the music. Very well done.

AE: I watched a few episodes as they went to air, but didn’t stay the course. Not that I didn’t like it, but just got distracted by life. The plan was to get the DVD and watch at leisure, but I have a huge pile of DVDs waiting for attention (I refer to them as The Great Unwatched).

CB: I’ve watched almost all of the first series and enjoyed it but I’m yet to catch up on Season 2.

PH: I’ve heard great things about the show and I’ve recently been given a DVD, which I’m yet to watch.

PMy: I couldn’t be a bigger fan of Sorkin so I was in from day one. I can’t lie some episodes almost drove me away. I can’t stand the love interest stuff but I’ve seen every ep of both seasons. It’s worth a look. The second season is very different to the first and has a single major storyline building over the entire series which is closer to the best seasons of the West Wing. The Newsroom isn’t as good as WW, but it’s better than Studio 60.

2. How does the Australian experience differ from the US?
LS: I’ve not worked in an American newsroom so I’m not sure. But when I was based in Washington for the ABC and covered stories alongside American colleagues, I generally thought their organizations were way better resourced than their Australian counterparts. The money in the US is extraordinary.

PM: In many, many ways. For dramatic purposes, Will appears to ad-lib many of his intro’s and interviews. In our newsrooms, words are timed to the second and therefore scripted. With all the newsroom romance and clashes with management it’s easy to tell it’s pure fiction.

AE: We’re less personality-driven (certainly in public broadcasting). Presenters don’t have much room to indulge in personal comment beyond the obvious throwaway line at the end of a funny story. And I would say our presentation tends towards everyday speech patterns and is more to the point, not “over-produced” in a formulaic newsy delivery.

CB: The Newsroom is Fantasyland but entertaining nonetheless. Will is a commentator, not a newsreader. Newsreaders don’t show Will’s personal, issues-based bias. That’s not part of the gig.

PH: I’ve never worked in a US newsroom, but I imagine the dynamics of newsrooms are pretty much the same the world over. We’re always working to deadlines and trying to get the most interesting stories to air as accurately and as quickly as possible.

PMy: There are very few news programs that are personality driven in Australia. Our 6pm bulletins try to turn reporters into stars so they promote their news. But in the states the host is a statement of the politics and values of the program. Bill O’Reilly on the right, Rachel Maddow on the Left and Keith Olbermann is doing the same now with sport on ESPN. We have a tradition of promoting hosts as stars, not ideological warriors or people with any obvious opinions. I prefer the American way of doing things because it’s more honest with the audience. You know what you’re getting.

3. Is life in a newsroom really that dramatic? Would it be a good topic for an Aussie version?
LS: It can be dramatic. Not so much people’s personal lives but on a busy news day, it can be high tension and very exciting. If my experience is anything to go by, it’d make for pretty boring TV – just me sitting at my desk, reading all day and talking to people on the phone.

PM: When any live bulletin goes to air here, especially with rolling coverage and live crosses to reporters, it is very dramatic and anything can happen. There might be some drama during the post-mortem meeting, but that’s about it. As far as Aussie versions go, I’d stick to Frontline.

AE: I thought Aaron Sorkin took quite a lot of dramatic licence. Nothing in real life happens in the kind of to-the-second precision that we see on screen. Reporters don’t regularly have Eureka moments which they shout out across the newsroom. And some of the characters (the economics reporter, some of the junior producers) were just too clever by half: so full of encyclopaedic information at the tip of their tongues, short sharp retorts always at the ready. A rare breed indeed. We also saw people wandering in and out of a live studio for exchanges with the presenter – with barely seconds to go before they’re on air. This would never be part of any studio protocol. But perhaps the biggest flight of fantasy is the way Anchor Will gets to go off script almost every night, editorialising to his heart’s content, as if this is his personal pulpit. Ever seen that on an Aussie news bulletin?

CB: When there’s breaking news, we do work fast and under the stresses on show in The Newsroom, but without the individual self-indulgence that’s in the show.

PH: The show is essentially a work of fiction and consequently has many more story-lines and much more drama than day-to-day life in a newsroom. The newsroom at Nine News Melbourne is, for the most part, quite a calm and business-like place to work.

PMy: I think the show is weakest when it focuses on interpersonal drama. The best scenes in The Newsroom are the ones with Jane Fonda as the boss of the networks parent company. Contrary to popular belief on Twitter you don’t get memos from the boss about what to say everyday but there can be tensions between the business side of a news operation and the stuff you see on TV. It is only in the most extreme cases and because we only have one or two genuinely opinion driven hosts it’s not a big issues for us here. Frontline is the closest we will ever get to this sort of show here. It comes down to if people have a genuine interest in how the sausage is made. I don’t know how much drama there is in covering a Premier’s press conference.

4. Tell us about a time when your team has been on a knife edge with a story and whether to run it or wait for more sources?
LS: I’m sure that has occasionally happened but I can’t recall a specific example.

PM: There was an obvious one for us many years back involving the medical records of certain AFL players and if we had our time over we’d certainly have taken a different tack, but it’s very rare that you’re placed in that situation. We use the terms “it’s believed,” “it’s alleged,” or “it’s reported,” a lot.

AE: With the advent of social media, information – and rumours – spread at unbelievable speed. There’s much more pressure to get the story out first. Check out how many times reporters now use BREAKING NEWS as an attention-grabber on Twitter, even when the story is patently not breaking news. The two recent examples I can think of when we, as a more traditional, check-your-sources broadcaster, had to take a deep breath and think things through involved the Labor leadership spill when Gillard defeated Rudd. Clearly, info was leaking from the party room and very soon even senior press gallery people were tweeting numbers. Unfortunately, the headline number (the margin of victory) was dead wrong. I’m very happy we chose not to run with the herd on that one. The second example was when Nelson Mandela went from serious to critical in hospital. An unsubstantiated report went out that he had died. People who jumped on that bandwagon – including a respected journo friend of mine in South Africa – were obliged to self-flagellate when the old man proved tougher than everyone imagined.

CB: I was anchoring our Christchurch earthquake coverage. No scripts. I’d been in the chair for about five hours autocue-free when the Director said in my earpiece, while I was talking about new pictures coming in: “We have a woman on the line, her name is Ann, she’s trapped under a desk, we’re going live to her now.” Even forgetting the live TV element, and lack of notice, what do you say to somebody trapped under rubble somewhere? So Anne and I just started chatting with a TV audience. At my end it felt truly bizarre. From the chat, we figured out which building she was in. We could see rescuers on the roof. When Ann was rescued from the building late the next morning I was so relieved, I shed a private tear. I’ve interviewed several Prime Ministers but that was one of the toughest interviews I have ever done.

PH: In March 2011, news of a tsunami began coming through from Japan’s northern Pacific coast. As reports mounted of damage and severe flooding, Nine’s Melbourne news director, Hugh Nailon, decided we would devote the entire second break of the bulletin to the event… Tony Jones and I ad-libbed about what we knew of the disaster, while running the latest satellite vision. Many of the stories planned for that night’s news were dumped to make way for that major breaking event.

PMy: I don’t face this dilemma because ours is an opinion show. The knife edge is often me scaring everyone with how close I cut it getting onto the set and we’re on the air. I’m used to radio where they deal in seconds, in TV it’s minutes and there are more people who need to know you are ready to go.

5. Does the anchor always cop the blame? How hard is it being the face of news?
LS: I think the face of a program does always wear the responsibility for things that go wrong, whether it’s their fault or not, but having said that, the anchor also gets a disproportionate amount of praise for things that go right, when often they have little involvement in that either. So it’s swings and roundabouts.

PM: As the public face of the bulletin it starts and ends with you. Reporters still have a great deal of responsibility also. Fortunately I haven’t had the finger pointed at me too many times. Also there is an upside. My butcher likes to throw in an extra sausage or two!

AE: Not always, but often. The viewer, to be fair, is not in a position to tell where any mistake has been made: in the research, in the writing, in the subbing, in the delivery. I’ve always considered everyone in the newsroom to be a gatekeeper. If a warning bell goes off in your head about content, speak up – preferably before we go to air. One of the responsibilities of the news presenter is to smooth things over, to prevent some of the turmoil that is part of the news production process to spill over onto the screen. This entails staying calm in the midst of a storm. This can be tough – we’re only human! – but it’s great when we play a part in steadying the ship.

CB: As the anchor, you’re the face of the News, so viewers are inclined to give you feedback, which is fair enough. You have to take the good with the bad, it’s part of the job, and that’s the same for any occupation.

PH: The anchor is an important part of the team, but the bulletin depends absolutely on teamwork. Every team member is vital to the success of the product.

PMy: We should. If you take the praise you have to take the hits. For me it’s not hard to be the face of the program, it’s clearly mine and my opinion. But that does mean you are very specifically targeted by people on social media. Not just when people disagree with you, but I can’t begin to tell you some of the hateful things people bring up about your personal life. But on the flip side, when you host a show like Will McAvoy does people really trust you and want you in their life. That’s a tremendous privilege.

Thanks to all for participating!