Nose Pressed Against the Media Window

Every once in a while I have the opportunity to get up close with some of the pressing issues facing our media landscape. At least from my perspective.

Just last week I may have been among the handful of people who spent time at both FOX News and at National Public Radio.

This was not a test, nor did I lose a bet. Each visit was for a meeting, and each visit provided perspective on why each institution, regardless of claims to the contrary, just doesn’t represent the universe of Americans who are cast across this vast country.

Over at FOX, there’s an apparent order, and hierarchy. It’s defined by the relatively larger spaces that each producer enjoys. Not cubicles, or banks of open space, mind you, but relatively comfy workstations with around 100 square feet of space, more than on average in other newsrooms. That’s one thing. Another is personal appearance. Journalists these days, at least those among us who toil behind the camera, have become every more comfortable in our clothes in this century. That’s not the impression at FOX. There, virtually everyone, both men and women, seem to be dressing from a workplace standard that hasn’t been updated since the election of George H.W. Bush. Men in ties, mostly, and women in sharp outfits. It’s a serious workplace, with everyone looking relatively crisp, and quite professional.

And then there’s the overall appearance. The FOX News Washington bureau looks like a workplace from before the election of a Bush as President. It’s a white place. There were so many white men milling about, and passing through corridors, that you would think you fell into a casting call for ‘Mad Men.’ Neat, clean looks, cropped hair, and scrubbed pink and alabaster faces seemed to fill in most every desk and workstation and control room seat. Yes, that’s often the look in many downtown Washington offices, even in 2011, but not to this extent. Not at all.

Time at NPR provided a visible contrast. Diversity rules the roost. A progressive hipness infuses every space in the building, from the leftover books bin, which had more books on sports than on policy, to the entry space, which provides a passel of images of NPR correspondents from across the nation and the world. It’s Portlandia, but on the edge of what used to be DC’s Chinatown.

The dress at NPR is significantly casual. Yes, it’s radio, after all, but some of the producers and editors must have meetings with sources outside of the newsroom every so often. And the workspace, well, there is need for more space, and more comfortable space, for all at NPR. Workstations are thrust one into the other, the carpets are a bit ratty in places, and there are reports of mice running across the floors.

But the most distinguishing characteristic, from a media perspective, was what was on the tv screens at NPR. Yes, there are television at NPR. While many who work for this public media provider may eschew televisions in their personal life, professionally they at least recognize the significance of images and visual reporting. And towards that end there are monitors near the news boards within each show’s primary news desk.

At the location I visited, all four televisions were tuned in to cable news channels. But here’s where NPR just doesn’t get it. You would think that with four channels, there might be CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and perhaps either C-SPAN or some other hard news channel. At this time, the four tv’s were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, a second set on CNN, and the fourth set, well, that was tuned in to al Jazeera English.

I almost swallowed my tongue laughing to myself when I came upon this, given what seemed to me to be obvious irony. But with reflection, it wasn’t ironic. It was just NPR.

Those same folks who show up at a knife fight with a tote bag (love that line) still sup at a different trough than their media brethren. And even as they present the widest array of news over four plus hours of programming each day on their morning and evening shows, they don’t seem to get that each of the three primary US cable companies are worth watching to see not only what’s being covered, but how that story is being covered.

Simply put, if you don’t have FOX on (or CNN, or MSNBC), you can’t know what it is they’re covering, and what they’re not. Virtually every other newsroom in Washington has all the primary channels up for view, and this is the first time I have come across one of them not only not on, but having an outlier channel on in its’ place.

Each newsroom seems to suffer from a criticism often leveled by outsiders, and that is their seeming inability to grow out of their comfort zones, FOX with the white majority, and NPR with its tone deafness to the wider audience of Americans.

Hell, maybe it’s just me, but these contrasts helped me through a long week, and a week that certainly had moments of amusement, and clarity. Now, who hid the remote. I need to see what’s on the tube this evening. Perhaps there’s a good cricket match on al Jazeera Ocho.