TVNewser has long covered the tendency of TV news outlets to pay for interviews by “licensing” photos, videos and other materials from potential interview subjects. Recently ABC News said that it would attempt to end–or at least severely curb–the practice, while CBS News reaffirmed that it does not believe in it.
As Jeremy Peters writes in the New York Times, however, the practice is nothing now. News outlets have long used the tactic to secure stories that might sell newspapers or magazines, or may draw people to a TV show.
One of the biggest controversies over such payments erupted in 1975 after CBS News coughed up a reported $100,000 for an extended interview with the former Nixon chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, who spent 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal.
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At the time, Robert Chandler, a CBS vice president, justified the payment as “a memoir of his five years at the White House. That’s different from paying for a breaking news story.”
The CBS rationalization — after all, its payment was little different from a hefty book advance to a controversial figure — shows that the issue of paying for news is rarely black and white.
Later, a journalism professor at NYU speculates that the practice will inevitably resurface… the competition is simply too strong, and the advantage of paying a subject too great.