I’ll never understand the thinking-or lack of same-that goes into television news.
For example, a few nights ago an anchorman-commentator at the Fox Network station in Chicago (Channel 32) expressed his opinions about the Baby Richard case.
He was furious with the Illinois Supreme Court for ordering the child returned to his biological father.
And he was especially angry at Justice James D. Heiple, who wrote the court’s opinion.
He told the viewers: “Justice Heiple, it seems to me, is not only evil, he is dangerous.”
A moment later, he emotionally told the viewers what they could do to let the judge know they disagreed with the court’s ruling.
“Call him and beg him. We beg you, your honor Judge Heiple, please stop destroying the lives of children.”
And the Fox anchorman did something that is unthinkable in the news business. Or at least it was in more thoughtful times.
He broadcast the judge’s home telephone number. It was displayed on the screen and the anchorman read it aloud.
The results were predictable. Almost immediately, the phone began ringing in the judge’s Downstate home.
The judge, we’re told, was stunned. So was his wife, who is seriously ill. When you are seriously ill in the privacy of your home, you don’t expect to spend the night hearing weird strangers saying terrible things.
John Madigan, spokesman for the court, says:
“I don’t want to sound scary, but they have received some calls that you or I would say were obscene. And calls where the person doesn’t say anything, and just hangs up.
“It’s one thing to debate an issue openly: abortion, the death penalty, nuclear power. But when you start giving out someone’s home telephone number like that, well, there are kooks out there, as we all know.”
Madigan spent 51 years in the news business, as a reporter, commentator, and newspaper and TV executive, but he says: “I can’t recall anyone ever doing something like that.”
The reasons this isn’t done should be obvious to anyone in or out of the news business. All you have to do is look at the headlines about doctors being shot outside of abortion clinics; judges who have been shot in their courtrooms; other public people being assassinated.
So if you tell a large TV audience that someone is “evil” and “dangerous” and is “destroying the lives of children,” that could easily be taken as an invitation for some wacko to do something about it.
And once you give out that person’s home phone number, it wouldn’t take the CIA to track down a home address.
It’s also malicious. Emotionally urging people to phone was obvious harassment, an attempt by the anchorman to punish Judge Heiple. I didn’t know that it was the job of a news operation to prevent people from sleeping in their own homes.
The maliciousness goes beyond the judge. By broadcasting someone’s home number, a station doesn’t just punish that individual. There is also the family.
As I said, the judge’s wife has a serious illness. (The nature of her illness is nobody else’s business, although the Fox station might consider poking a camera in her bedroom window.) Threats and obscene phone calls from Fox’s viewers aren’t the best medicine.
But apparently the right of the judge and his wife to have privacy in their own home didn’t blink a light in the brain of the anchorman, the Fox station’s news director, or the producer of the show.
However, the station appears to have a deep sense of its own right to privacy.
When Madigan, the court spokesman, asked the station for a transcript of the broadcast, he was brushed off. The station wouldn’t return most of his persistent phone calls.
And when he finally got a few news department people, he says, “I was told that it is Fox’s policy that they do not give out transcripts.
“He (the anchorman) told me it was the station’s policy and that there was nothing he could do about it.
“I’ve never heard of a policy like that. When I was news director at Channel 2, if someone was mentioned in a commentary, we immediately supplied them with a transcript.”
That seems only fair. Even fundamental. If you use the power of TV to bray that a public person is “evil,” “dangerous” and a destroyer of children, the least you can do is put it in writing.
But more and more, TV news sets its own rules, which have little or nothing to do with fairness, decency or even common sense. You keep a sick woman awake all night with nutty and scary phone calls-hey, her husband is a public figure, right?
And the show must go on.
There is an ironic twist to this.
Back in the days when he was the news director at Channel 2, Madigan gave a young hustler his big break by hiring him as a TV reporter.
That hustler is now the anchorman at the Fox station.
I guess that’s what they mean when they say: “What goes around, comes around.”
