Poynter’s Al Tompkins has been holding focus groups with local TV news viewers for a decade. “There is a blowback building out there,” he writes after his latest focus group meeting, this time in Cincinnati. “The public seems more skeptical, more aggravated and less tolerant of what we are reporting.”
Viewers want reporters to take them seriously, writes Tompkins, but what really sets them off is “journalists who grandstand and make stories seem bigger than they are.” How often does that happen in local TV?
To me, focus groups like these illustrate the urgency for local TV journalists to embrace social media — not for promotion, but to listen, respond and provide context to coverage. In an age in which journalists are suffering from plummeting credibility, it’s a way to put a face on your coverage – to show that you’re real and you care about how it’s received.
Tompkins played a story to a focus group of a Sacramento reporter who interviewed a handcuffed woman at a “major bust” at a “house of sex.” The group gasped at the reporter’s combative style, and he defended his actions in an interview with Tompkins by pointing to his station’s Facebook page where he said viewer comments were running in his favor.
But I’ll argue that’s not social media — it’s viewer email. And the way the station presented it on Facebook (above) was a copy-paste of a television promo, not the reporter engaging with the audience. Social media is an opportunity for local TV journalists to really listen and take viewers seriously. We’ve put together a guide called Social Media Tips and Tools for Journalists, which we hope will help provide some ideas.