KGUN9 On Your Side, Tucson News, Weather & SportsViewers, some outraged, debate KGUN9 News protest coverage

Viewers, some outraged, debate KGUN9 News protest coverage

We regularly solicit feedback from our viewers at KGUN9 News.  Viewers certainly took us up on that invitation on Thursday. 

Boy, did you.

Our decision to run one hour of continuous, commercial-free live coverage of the SB 1070 protests in downtown Tucson drew heated debate.  Many viewers criticized the decision to give so much air time to those opposed to SB 1070.  Some of those viewers were beside themselves with outrage.  A smaller group defended the coverage and thanked us for not giving in to the pressure to stop it. 

In addition to the emails, we also received a flood of phone calls.  We're still getting them.  Some of the callers have been very heated, even obscene.  Some of the calls and e-mails, regrettably, have been overtly hateful and racist in nature, using words that we normally don't allow on our air or on our website.  So far, the volume of feedback has rivaled records that were set in April when the coverage of SB 1070 began.

Below is a sample of some of the more civil feedback received since 5pm Thursday:

Sharon Bulgrin:  "You are giving these protesters just what they want. I think we've had enough, don't you? Guess not."

Max A. Calvin:  "I think this 1/2 hour of news was, probably, the worst 1/2 hour of news that you have ever done. Wasted the entire newscast on what maybe 30 or 40 people were doing downtown. You have your priorities mixed up. This news spot should have taken up not more than 2 or 3 minutes."

"Mpatsycat:"  "My name is angel.  Thank you for your coverage.  My wife was deported.  I cross the border every weekend.  The borders are as safe as one makes them.  Keep up your good work."

D. Christopher Ferrick:  "It is absolutely ridiculous that the Tucson Police are letting a group of people shut down traffic in the city.  This only proves the point that Tucson is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.  The police chief should be relieved of duty for this inaction.  As noted by another viewer, the media continues their bias.  Please don't continue to lie and say that you cover both sides of the story.  Residents of Tucson are not that stupid."

Chuck Brill:  "Why are you wasting time on these punks?  They are just looking for the camera.  Why are you interviewing these idiots?"

Stephen Richards:  "Thanks for the biased coverage."

"Georgie:"  "This type of protest is not worth the coverage.  These people are protesting for the rights of ILLEGALS.  And frankly,  this mindless chit chat has gone on for long enough.  It would have been nice if you had chosen to air the national news.  An hour from now the situation will be the same and some of us could care less.  I, for one am going to watch another channel."

Beth Cunningham:  "I am enjoying every second Channel 9 is showing and I will continue to watch as your showing it right now thank you for the great coverage of what's going on."

Mike and Becky Dees:  "Ridiculous."
 
Stewart Embrey:  "Shame on you people for only showing the people against SB1070. 70%+ support this bill and you know it. Shame on you people. I can only guess that your producer is a Mexican calling the shots."

James Elliot:  "Please Folks – Use your God given since YOU and only you have the ability to end the protest. Remove your coverage and the protesters will have NO reason to continue. As long as you are there to publish their view - - they will continue.  Go home and take your fellow media with you."

Neil J. Netley:  "This protest needs to be fully covered, regardless what the Green Valley [derogatory word deleted] say."

Williams Beardsley:  "NEVER in modern times have I heard so much dribble about a few small protests. You have spent more time covering this than is or was really necessary!!!!!  This situation will, I trust, be decided in the courts and NOT by any of the local TV channels!!  ... As my wife just stated, 'Leave it to them to cause an incident! Even your own reporters stated that the demonstrators were performing for the cameras!!!!!'"

Gay Schmidt:  "I'm sending this same message to the other tv networks in Tucson.  I am absolutely livid that you devoted the whole half hour to the protestors.  This is exactly what they wanted - tv coverage and all the networks went right along with it.  While the issue is important, devoting the whole news time to them was ludicrous."

Nolan Gillooly:  "The coverage you are doing on SB1070 is really great.  These people need to go home and let the ruling be the what it is."

There's a lot more along those lines.  The samples above all came from e-mails sent directly to comments@kgun9.com and have not previously been published online (although we did read some of them on air during our coverage Thursday night).  There are many, many more comments available in the "comments" section of the various stories we have posted on KGUN9.com related to SB 1070, in particular our story about last night's demonstrations.

In most of the e-mails and comments we've been receiving the writers wear their political views, and sometimes racist views (on both sides) on their sleeves.  Those who favor SB 1070 tended to be opposed to seeing so  much coverage devoted to an SB 1070 protest.  Those opposed to SB 1070, which is a smaller group, tended to support the protest.  E-mails such as that last one from Mr. Gillooly, who wrote in support of the coverage even though he disagreed with the protestors, were much more rare.

In our Viewers' Bill of Rights we promise to hold ourselves accountable to you.  The first step in that process is to solicit feedback. The second step is to share some of that feedback.  The third is to explain ourselves.  We now owe you that explanation.

First, here's quick snapshot of what happened.  We had already planned a live report at the top of the 5pm news about the downtown protest, which -- despite the beliefs of some of those who wrote us -- had been underway for hours even without live TV coverage.  As we were on the air, a deadline police had given for protestors to disperse expired, and officers began moving in.  We found the confrontation that was now found unfolding before our live camera to be both newsworthy and compelling, and we stayed with it, pre-empting the material we had prepared for our 5pm newscast, and also airing the coverage commercial-free.  KOLD-TV and KVOA-TV did the same.  By 5:30 PM, it appeared the intersection had been cleared, and we were ready to join ABC's World News Tonight.  In fact we announced our intention to do just that.  But then new demonstrators arrived on the scene via bicycle, and police began reacting to that.  We stayed with it.  KOLD-TV did the same.  KVOA-TV chose to join NBC Nightly News.  At 6:00 PM, we started our normal 6pm newscast as planned.  Our competitors did the same.

Why on earth would we devote so much airtime to these protests?  As I noted above, the events were both intensely newsworthy and intensely compelling.  We didn't quite know what was going to happen.  We kept the live coverage going.

As you can see from the comments above, many of our viewers were concerned about giving a live platform to just one side of an intensely partisan political debate.  That point is valid.  We are very well aware that many political groups -- on all points of the political spectrum --  sometimes schedule demonstrations at newscast time in order to maximize the possibility of live coverage.  We don't like being manipulated that way, either, and we often say "no" to such coverage, choosing instead to cover such events in a different way.

This was different.  It was a major and well organized political expression on an issue that has practically monopolized local and state news for months, and which has thrust Arizona into the national and international spotlight as well. 

American democracy works not just through the ballot box.  It works through people organizing and networking to express themselves in the fashion we saw yesterday.   It's part of the American way of life.  We covered it.

Were there aspects of the coverage that should have made you uncomfortable?  You bet.  For one thing, we normally try to filter out the most rabidly racist or obscene comments that we get from time to time.  That is less possible when we are covering events live.  Some of what went out over our airwaves Thursday night certainly made me shift in my seat.   For another thing --and I'll say this even though, except for explaining our coverage, I normally don't comment on the news -- I don't mind admitting that the video of protestors dragging the American flag around with their feet personally offended me.

Yet we showed it.  We showed it because it happened and we think you need to know about it and want to know about it, even if it makes you uncomfortable, too.

As to Mr. Beardsley's point -- I'm sure there was indeed a certain amount of performing for the cameras.  Crowds do react to live TV coverage.  We are aware of that.  We were monitoring this very closely.  If that crowd reaction had turned dangerous, we were prepared to immediately stop our live coverage.

It is also true that we have duty to be balanced in our coverage -- or, more precisely, we have a duty to cast a wide net for diversity of opinion (there are almost always more than two sides to every story, and that is certainly true in the SB 1070 debate).  Events such as last night's demonstration are one-sided in nature. 

We try to even the score out in two ways.  First, we make sure that, as our coverage unfolds over time, that we are giving voice to all sides, and that we don't let any one side dominate the conversation in the long run.  This is not an easy task and it's also not always a popular one.  As some of the viewer e-mails we've shared attest, many in the majority believe they have a right to dominate the conversation and feel that our refusal to allow that is an act of bias.

The other way we even up the score is to ask tough questions of those we cover.   If you look at the interviews Joel Waldman conducted Thursday night at 5pm and 10pm, you'll see that he did do exactly that in many of the questions he asked of demonstrators.  That doesn't mean he's opposed to the demonstrators.  But he's not there just to hand them a microphone.  It's his job, our our mission, to try to help you hold them accountable.  Steve Nuñez did something similar when the shoe was on the other foot in our coverage of Joe Arpaio Thursday night.  He asked questions tough enough to visibly irritate the sheriff -- not because he disagrees with Arpaio or because he was trying to annoy him, but because failure to ask challenging questions would have made the coverage completely one sided.

News is an art, not a science.  I would never try to claim that we get it completely right on any given day.  We do pay close attention to what our viewers tell us.  Please keep those comments coming.  You can comment directly on KGUN9.com by posting your thoughts on most of the stories that we publish (including this one); you can e-mail us at comments@kgun9.com; and you can also post on our Facebook page.

Forrest Carr, KGUN9 News Director
fcarr@kgun9.com