Morning in the newsroom begins at the assignment desk. The overnight news is checked, the newspaper is combed, and the competing radio and television newscasts are monitored.
As that is done, the assignment desk slides into the predictable pattern of making beat checks. These are phone calls made to law enforcement officials in the area, starting with the city’s police department and the county sheriff’s office. These calls tend to be informal as the newsperson and the police officer talk daily and develop a rudimentary working relationship. A basic conversa- tion takes only 20 to 30 seconds and falls along these lines:
Dispatch Officer: “Dispatch.”
Newsroom: “Good morning, this is Channel 11 checking in on you.”
Dispatch Officer: “Morning, Jeff. Pretty quiet last night.”
Newsroom: “Nothing on the activity report?”
Dispatch Officer: “Two drug arrests and one minor fender bender, that’s about it.”
Newsroom: “Thanks, we’ll get someone by to check the press pad.”
Dispatch Officer: “No problem.”
The dispatch officer is relaying information gleaned from a patrol activity report.
At the end of a work shift, all field reports are funneled to the desk sergeant to compile this report. The form is fairly broad and lacks the detail necessary for a newscast. What it provides is an overview of the shift’s events.
If the only items noted are minor accidents or barking dogs, the news reporter might feel free to move on. But what if it were the mayor in the accident or if the dog was in a homeowners’ association that has a strict no-pet policy?
While beat checks are an easy way to keep in touch with the police stations, the dispatcher may only provide you with information on “big stories,” such as murders or arsons. Remember, even the most mundane stories may be worth a closer look.
Should something be of interest (in this case, the drug arrests are worth a follow-up) the dispatch officer on the phone is usually not authorized to provide more than broad information. To pursue the story, contact must be made with the public information officer (PIO) or someone must visit the police station or sheriff’s department.
PATROL ACTIVITY REPORT
1 Date: ___________________________
DAY SHIFT EVENING SHIFT MIDNIGHT SHIFT TYPE OF INCIDENTS Totals Case #s: Totals Case #s: Totals Case #s:
Drug Arrests Assaults:
Aggravated Battery
Sexual Assaults:
(Rape, Sexual Assault, Sexual Battery, Sodomy, Aggravated Sodomy, Child Molestation) Traffic Accident w/Fatalities Burglary:
Residential Commercial Robbery:
Armed
Sudden Snatching Intimidation Homicide Deaths:
Suicide Other
Misc. Incidents:
Arson
The PIO is the police’s source of information to the media. Police departments usually train a sergeant or lieutenant in media relations, thus instructing other officers to defer to the PIO at all times. During their training, PIOs learn what information can be released to the press without endangering an investigation, putting additional stress on a victim, or revealing confidential information.
Except for the police chief or the sheriff, the PIO is the only contact a news- room will have at the station. A good working relationship with a PIO is invaluable, as they sort through confusing details at a crime scene and provide reliable interviews. Further, most PIOs will alert the news teams to a crime scene during overnight or weekend hours.
Beat Checks, Cop Shops, and Police Scanners 33
If the PIO isn’t available to field the assignment desk’s call (and they likely aren’t at this hour), a trip should be made to the police station or sheriff’s office, often referred to as cop shops. Once there, the reporter reviews the inci- dent log from the previous night. The incident log may be called a press pad or crime log, but the idea is consistent—it contains a stack of the police inci- dent reports that have been filed during the past several work shifts.
The press pad should be open for review upon request, provided one presents a valid news station identification. If not, an immediate appeal should be filed with the commanding officer. Most police logs are available to the press, although records concerning minors or sexual assault victims are off-limits.
A standard practice is for law enforcement to have two types of reports avail- able on the press pad. The first is an incident report. These may be referred to as crime reports, as they provide details of criminal activity. Theft, murder, and other criminal acts are filed on these, along with pertinent information including:
■ The criminal act that occurred
■ Time and location of the incident
■ Suspect’s description (if any) and information about the person if apprehended
There are other details, but the three crucial points just given are enough to determine the merit of the story. Consider a burglary (criminal act) at the East Elm Warehouse at 3 a.m. (time and location), where witnesses saw a 60-year- old white male (suspect description) flee on foot. It may be simply a minor theft, but if police are actively searching and warning residents to be aware, it could become a serious item. Either way, the newsroom has the basics of a story.
The second report is a motor vehicle accident report. Everything from minor fender-benders to multiple car collisions will be filed, but few are of interest unless the accident was fatal, involved a local celebrity, or tied up traffic for several hours. The reason that even minor accidents are recorded is that insurance companies and lawyers use these official documents to investigate automobile claims. Thus, there will be quite a bit of information that, while important to the victims of the accident, isn’t newsworthy to the general public.
Finally, scanners are desktop or handheld units that monitor radio communi- cations among those using two-way radios. Once used heavily by police and fire departments, scanners are being gradually replaced by cell phones and computers. But because some agencies have not yet upgraded beyond two-way radios to communicate, scanners are still used in newsrooms.
Scanners cycle through open frequencies, but they may be programmed to listen to specific channels. These scanner frequencies are readily available on Internet sites such as www.radioreference.com. In addition to police and state trooper channels, other radio frequencies can be found, programmed, and monitored with ease. Some groups that still use two-way radios include emer- gency medical services, a city’s water division, city towing, street maintenance, city jail, city courthouse, the National Weather Service, the Civil Air Patrol, fire departments, oil spill cleanup crews, railroads, aircraft, highway maintenance, and other radio frequencies depending on their availability. Listening to these conversations can prove vital in times of emergencies; thus their frequencies are kept available.
No information obtained from these radio scanners is ever used alone in writing a story for broadcast; the incidents must be checked out by phone. The police and fire reports often turn out to be unfounded or less serious than one might expect from the code. It is also a violation of FCC regulations to rebroad- cast any material heard on police, fire, or ham radio broadcasts.
NEWs RELEAsEs ANd FuTuREs FILEs
A symbiotic relationship exists between reporters and public relations experts.
Reporters are responsible for generating stories on a continual basis. Public relations experts, spokespeople, and advocates need their information distrib- uted to a broad audience.
This interaction shows the clash of objectivity and subjectivity. Simply put, the reporter’s credo is objectivity, which is absolute neutrality to an issue. But the public relations expert struggles for subjectivity, which advocates one point of view over another. This includes political assistants (who support their candidate over another), advocacy group spokesmen (who desire change to suit their mindset), and even salespeople (who crave exposure of their product over a competing brand).
With the enticement of a broad audience, free publicity, or a good old-fash- ioned soapbox, subjective groups consistently offer stories to newsrooms.
These come in the form of e-mails, phone calls, press releases, faxes, and letters. As a rule, these public relations pieces are not trashed upon arrival regardless of their source. Instead, they are filed into a newsrooms’ futures files.
Despite the computerization of newsrooms, futures files are often still nothing more than a regular filing cabinet. When a press release comes in for an event to be held on the 19th of the month, it is filed on the 17th or 18th. This allows a day or two of advance notice for the news crew. Additionally, the informa- tion is input into a computer calendar such as Microsoft Access or a news- specific scheduling system.
The Calendar 35
During a typical day, there may be a booster club meeting for the local football team, a guest speaker for the Kiwanis, a tree planting at an elementary school, a blood drive, a car wash to raise funds for a worthy cause, a hospital outreach program, and a mayoral luncheon. Are these necessarily stories? The answer is yes, particularly on a slow news day. On an active day, most of these will be dropped quickly.
The end result is that these story leads serve reporters well; thus they are still a cornerstone of news production. However, all news personnel must remain keenly aware of the source of the story. Some of the aforementioned stories are harmless enough (the tree planting, for example) but the mayoral lun- cheon could have overtones in a campaign season or if a controversial issue is in the public forum.