PAY-FOR-PLAY JOURNALISM 

 
$2,500 will get you a 4-6 minute interview on Tampa's WFLA-8-NBC morning show.

Most networks and local television stations have strict rules against pay-for-play journalism. But WFLA's "Daytime" is not shy about asking guests to pony up. They have turned the routine daily booking of guests into a commercial transaction.

"You pay us and we do what you want us to do," explained a show producer.

Eric Land, WFLA's president and general manager, sees no problem with the payments "from an ethics standpoint," saying: "It's not a news program, nor is it operated by the news department. It's a separate entertainment program."

As for the propriety of charging guests, Land said: "This television station has a history of breaking new ground. It gives some local advertisers who might not have production capabilities a chance to come on and demonstrate their product or service in a different format than 30-second spots."

No mention of payment is made during the interviews. At the end of the show, the words "the following segments were paid advertisements" appear in small type on the screen for about four seconds, along with a listing of the stories.

Somehow....we suspect....muzzled News Director Forrest Carr, who had always taken pride in his journalistic ethics, must be quietly gnashing his teeth at corporate boss Media General's latest turn. 

Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post....

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STEAMED BROKAW

Gossipers Rush and Molloy report in today's NY Daily News that "Tom Brokaw is steamed at Maria Shriver. The NBC News anchor called his Dateline colleague and 'gave her a tongue-lashing' after her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, gave his first post-election interview to CBS anchor Dan Rather."

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Brokaw's fellow South Dakotan Pat O'Brien, who is set to anchor a portion of NBC's Olympics coverage next year, is said to be considering a run for the governorship of South Dakota.  Details.... 

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WINDY COVERAGE

Heavy winds hampered local stations from covering the immediate aftermath of yesterday's Staten Island Ferry crash.

WCBS-2 broke in at 3:45 p.m. with a report on the crash from Ernie Anastos, followed soon after by short newsbreaks from other stations.

But images from the crash were hard to come by. WNYW-5-Fox got its helicopter in the air first, and WCBS soon used still images from WNYW's feed....without the Fox station's permission.

Others used footage...with permission...from WPIX-11-WB's chopper.

With the exception of NY 1 News (which is all-news), none of the local broadcast stations went wall-to-wall with the story until 5 p.m. By then, most of the local helicopters were airborne, reports Richard Huff in the NY Daily News.

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CHOPPER CRASH...SORTA

Dave Hughes reports in his excellent Washington-Baltimore TV insider web DCRTV that....WJZ's "Sky Eye Chopper 13" crashed and was severely damaged and possibly destroyed during a maintenance incident at Martin State Airport in Middle River on Wednesday evening. 

Jay Newman, the CBS-owned station's vice president and general manager, says a worker was doing routine maintenance on the helicopter's engine at 7:30 PM when the craft became airborne and fell over. No one was injured.

Editor's note: Just a few weeks ago, Baltimore's WBAL-11-NBC swiped longtime WJZ chopper jock Roy Taylor. For the time being, at least, WJZ appears to be out of the news chopper business.

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BAD DAY FOR CARL DAY

Carl Day, veteran news anchor at Dayton's WDTN-2-ABC, shared some bad news with his colleagues and friends Wednesday. He confirmed that the leukemia he fought off in 1997 has returned. 

Day, who is 65, said he will undergo surgery Friday and will have two lines placed into his arteries which doctors use for treatment purposes. He will then begin chemotherapy on Monday.

Details....

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SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT

NY1 reporter Rebecca Spitz has opened her eyes occasionally, but remains in a coma at St. Luke's Hospital nearly one month since her accident. She is in critical but stable condition. 

More from Michael Starr in the NY Post....

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NY1 reporters Adam Balkin and Susan Jhun were married this week on the Greek island of Santorini. Details...

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CNN news boss Jim Walton wants to boost morale, so he's offering employees a chance to win $12,000 in "a company-wide talent competition" in Atlanta, New York, Washington, London and Hong Kong. 

"We don't even have a holiday party; why this?" asked one.   Details....

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NBC News auctioned off its book, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: 22 Historic Days in Words and Pictures," on eBay - fetching $3,500 which will be donated to the David Bloom Children's Trust. 

Bloom died last April while on assignment in Iraq, leaving behind a wife and three young daughters.

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Showtime announced yesterday it will produce "The Jayson Blair Project," based on the story of the ex-New York Times reporter who was fired for plagiarism and fabrication on hundreds of stories he filed over a period of several years.

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As we told you last week, and the Orlando Sentinel is finally reporting, WFTV Holdings, which owns WFTV-9-ABC and WRDQ-27, was slapped with a $10,000 fine this month because it didn't follow FCC guidelines when setting up its new digital transmitter. 

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Tammi Arender, news director and anchor at KARD-43-Fox and KTVE-10-NBC in Monroe, Louisiana, will leave the station Oct. 24. to "pursue other opportunities." 

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THE DEFENSIVE NEWSROOM

"Fear has become the dominant influence in newsrooms everywhere, and it's one of the reasons viewers are turning away," writes Terry Heaton, a 32-year veteran of the TV news wars.

"People who consistently come to work in fear of their jobs simply cannot do a good job of reporting and presenting the news." 

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UNCLE WALTER

The much honored Texas Monthly Magazine has a long and rambling interview with Walter Cronkite in its current issue.

Writer Evan Smith asks the former CBS anchor: "Why is it wrong for you to be a liberal in your column but okay for O'Reilly and his friends at Fox to be openly conservative?"

Cronkite's reply: "That's the inconsistency you find with the all-out propagandists. I don't find any reason or rationality in that at all. The O'Reilly attacks on me, I think, are almost a compliment. I like the fact that he feels that I'm important enough and what I say is enticing enough to the populace that he has to attack it."

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DECEITFUL CRUSADERS

Tampa's WTVT-13-Fox has had a roller coaster ride in recent years -- changes of ownership, new network affiliation, old management swept out. But nothing has shaken the station's landmark tower on Kennedy Boulevard more than an almost seven-year dispute and lawsuit with two of its former reporters.

Reputations have been tarnished by the spat. Phil Metlin, WTVT's news director, says, "When I do a search online of my name, the results are just horrible. That's not who I am."

Metlin and his news staff are victims of a very shrewd -- and highly disingenuous -- campaign by the reporters, a husband-wife duo named Steve Wilson (right) and Jane Akre. The two have appealed to the liberal community's knee-jerk hatred of Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire in an effort to cloud the facts in the case.

Don't miss this article in Tampa's Weekly Planet by John Sugg, in which he reveals that Steve Wilson admits to keeping $5,000 in cash under his mattress.

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ON THE ROAD WITH WENDY

It's hard to feel good about beating up on Wendy Chioji, the cancer survivor news anchor at Orlando's WESH-2-NBC, who is participating in a cross-country bicycle fund raiser.

Labeled "Wendy's Tour of Hope," WESH is pulling out all the promotional stops, continually pounding the silly non-news story down the throats of unwilling news viewers.

We so thoroughly enjoyed Chioji's senseless daily diary drivel when she reported for the Hearst-Argyle stations from the Salt Lake City Olympics parking lot, our ears perked up when we learned that she was also keeping a similar online diary of her bike trip.

And, sure enough, she does not disappoint. Recent revelations....

"We stopped at a Whataburger Tuesday for malts and fries -- anything but Powerbars and turkey sandwiches."

"We saw a jackrabbit, buffalo, antelope and a deer."

"Today I'm having pasta with butter and parmesan sauce and a Caeser salad."

"Nutella. It is delicious. It's this chocolaty, hazelnutty, chocolaty, gooey, sticky, chocolaty stuff. On a banana, it totally revived me. I am going to eat it on everything but pizza."

Don't miss a single word of Wendy's riveting diary....

By the way, Lance Armstrong, who pedaled a few miles at the beginning of the "race," is now pedaling his way through a divorce.

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