Say What You Will (Requiem for a TV News Career)

Maybe this was always the way it had to be.

When I was 19, I broke into the offices of WVUM -- the radio station at the University of Miami -- live, during an installment of my weekly radio show. I raided a file cabinet and my crew and I proceeded to read the minutes of that week's executive board meeting on the air, paying special attention to a recurring topic of conversation among my apparently exasperated supervisors -- a series of incidents which, collectively, were referred to as "The Chez Situation."

The board as a whole was less-than-pleased with, for example, my insistence on jokingly pointing out to my audience the fact that WVUM's faculty adviser seemed to be waging and winning a valiant war against sobriety, and as such deserved congratulations all-around. There was also my insinuation that one of the station's sponsors, a club which had just opened on South Beach, would likely be closed in two weeks then renamed and reopened two weeks later. (In fact, it took about a month to close.)

I regularly ignored the program director's God-awful musical "suggestions," choosing instead to play whatever I felt like hearing.

I ridiculed the University's decision to replace the garbage cans on campus with new, attractive, and extraordinarily expensive stone receptacles immediately after making an announcement that tuition for the coming year would be skyrocketing.

I poked fun at the frat boys.

I advocated mischievous insurrection.

I occasionally threw out a few low-level swear words on-air.

I was kind of a punk kid, and I admit it.

Yet, despite the all of this, I remained on the air simply because even though my superiors may have been irritated by the fallout from my juvenile antics, they usually found the antics themselves eminently entertaining. I was good at what I did; I had a voice and I wasn't the least bit afraid to use it, consequences be damned -- or not considered at all. Being exactly who I was, for whatever reason, seemed to be more important to me than any other consideration.

When I got into television, I did my best to bury my inner-revolutionary. For 16 years I've been a successful producer and manager of TV news, cranking out creative, occasionally daring content on good days and solid, no-frills material on the days in between. I've won several awards and for the most part can say that I'm proud of what I've done in the business, particularly since I never intended to get into it in the first place; by the time college was over, I was playing steadily in a band and fully believed sleeping on floors and subsisting on beer and Taco Bell to be an entirely noble endeavor. I wound up working at WSVN in Miami only after the band imploded, taking my dreams of rock n' roll glory with it. Since those earliest days, I've come to understand that the libertine, pirate ship mentality I found so seductive during my time in a rock band is pretty much a staple of most newsrooms, particularly at the local level. What's more, it's accompanied by a slightly better paycheck (although often only slightly).

Over the past several years though, something has changed. Drastically. And I'm not sure whether it's me, or television news, or both.

With the exception of the period immediately following 9/11, which saw the best characteristics of television journalism shocked back into focus and the passion of even the most jaded and cynical of its practitioners return like a shot of adrenaline to the heart, the profession I once loved and felt honored to be a part of has lost its way.

I say this with the knowledge of implied complicity: I continued to draw a salary from stations at the local level and national networks long after I had noticed an unsettling trend in which real news was being regularly abandoned in favor of, well, crap. I may not have drank the Kool-aid, but I did take the money. I may have been uncomfortable with a lot of what I was putting on the air, but I was comfortable in the life that it provided me. I just figured, screw it, most people don't like their jobs; shut up and do what you're told, or at least try to. Besides, I told myself, what the hell else do you know how to do?

That attitude began to change in April of 2006 -- when I found out that I had a tumor the size of a pinball inside my head.

I was working for CNN at the time, a job I had been proud to accept three years earlier as CNN was in my mind the gold-standard of television journalism. I readily admit that it was Time-Warner's medical plan that provided me the best care possible for the removal of the tumor and during my subsequent recovery, but following my operation, what had been clawing at my insides for years finally began to come to the surface. TV news wasn't the least bit fulfilling anymore, and I either needed to get out of it once and for all or find an outlet for my nascent iconoclastic tendencies.

So I started a blog.

I did it mostly to pass the time, hone my writing skills, resurrect my voice a little, and keep my mind sharp following the surgery. As is the case with many online journals, not a soul other than myself and a few close friends and family were even aware of what I was doing, much less read my stuff regularly. I thought nothing of returning to work at the end of my medical leave while continuing to write online. Really, who the hell knew who I was? Who cared what I had to say?

As it would turn out, over time, more than a few people.

My admittedly worthless opinions on pop culture, politics, the media and my personal past were quickly linked by sites like Fark, Gawker and Pajiba and I found my readership growing exponentially. During this time, I still didn't consider telling my superiors at CNN what I was doing on the side, simply because, having never been provided with an employee handbook, I hadn't seen a pertinent rule and never signed any agreement stipulating that I wouldn't write on my own time. I hadn't divulged my place of work and wasn't writing about what went on at the office. The views expressed on my blog, Deus Ex Malcontent, were mine and mine alone. I represented no one but myself, and I didn't make a dime doing it.

For 20 months after starting DXM, I continued to work as a producer on American Morning, one of many charged with putting together the show. During that time, I received consistently favorable reviews (while in Atlanta I was told that I was well on my way to becoming an executive producer) and, more importantly, neither my credibility nor objectivity was ever called into question. Like anyone who considers him or herself a respectable news professional, whatever my personal opinions were, they were checked at the door when I walked into work. Having grown up in a household in which the highest ideals of journalism were never more than a conversation away -- my father was an old-school investigative reporter -- I knew full well that you couldn't avoid having opinions and viewpoints, but you never let them get in the way of your journalistic responsibility

As far as CNN knew, I was a valued employee, albeit one with almost no say in the day-to-day editorial decisions on American Morning. This held true even as I began contributing columns to the Huffington Post, giving my writing more exposure than ever before.

Then, last Monday afternoon, I got a call from my boss, Ed Litvak.

Ed, seeming to channel Bill Lumburgh from Office Space, informed me of that which I was already very well aware: that my name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet. I casually admitted as much and was then informed of something I didn't know: that I could be fired outright for this offense. 24 hours later, I was. During my final conversation with Ed Litvak and a representative from HR, they hammered home a single line in the CNN employee handbook which states that any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" must be run through the network's standards and practices department. They asked if I had seen this decree. As a matter of fact I had, but only about a month previously, when I stumbled across a copy of that handbook on someone's desk and thumbed through it. I let them know exactly what I had thought when I read the rule, namely that it was staggeringly vague and couldn't possibly apply to something as innocuous as a blog. (I didn't realize until later that CNN had canned a 29-year-old intern for having the temerity to write about her work experiences -- her positive work experiences -- in a password-protected online journal a year earlier.) I told both my boss and HR representative that a network which prides itself on being so internet savvy -- or promotes itself as such, ad nauseam -- should probably specify blogging and online networking restrictions in its handbook. I said that they can't possibly expect CNN employees, en masse, to not engage in something as popular and timely as blogging if they don't make themselves perfectly clear.

My HR rep's response: "Well, as far as we know, you're the only CNN employee who's blogging under his own name."

It took self-control I didn't know I had to keep from laughing, considering that I could name five people off the top of my head who blogged without hiding their identities.

Uh-huh, as far as you know.

When I asked, just out of curiosity, who came across my blog and/or the columns in the Huffington Post, the woman from HR answered, "We have people within the company whose job is specifically to research this kind of thing in regard to employees."

Jesus, we have a Gestapo?

A few minutes later, I was off the phone and out of a job. No severance. No warning (which would've been a much smarter proposition for CNN as it would've put the ball effectively in my court and forced me to decide between my job or the blog). No nothing. Just, go away.

Right before I hung up, I asked for the "official grounds" for my dismissal, figuring the information might be important later. At first they repeated the line about not writing anything outside of CNN without permission, but HR then made a surprising comment: "It's also, you know, the nature of what you've been writing."

And right there I knew that CNN's concern wasn't so much that I had been writing as what I'd been writing. Whether a respected and loyal CNN producer of four years, like myself, could've gotten off with a warning had I chosen to write about, say, my favorite pasta sauce recipes, who knows. I'm dead sure though that my superiors never concerned themselves with my ability or inability to remain objective at work, given my strong opinions; they worried only about an appearance of bias (specifically, a liberal bias), and apparently they worried about it more than any potential fallout from firing a popular blogger with an audience that was already large and was sure to grow much larger when news of his firing put him in the national spotlight.

It's probably right about now that I should make something perfectly clear: I'm not naive -- I always understood that CNN, like any big company, might be apt to fire whoever it damn well pleases so long as the law remains intact at the end of the day.

Should they have fired me though?

Probably not, and only arrogant myopia would make them think otherwise.

As soon as the official word came down, I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine named Jacki Schechner. CNN junkies will recognize her as a former internet reporter for the network, one who pulled double-duty on American Morning and The Situation Room -- that is until the day she was taken out into the figurative woods without any warning and given the Old Yeller treatment. CNN's willingness to fire someone like Jacki tells you everything you need to know about how backward the network's thinking is when it comes to new media. It pays more lip-service to bloggers and their internet realm than any other mainstream media outlet, but in the end that's really all it is -- lip-service. Jacki was not only popular in internet circles, she had forged personal relationships with most of the big names in the blogosphere and knew her stuff inside and out. Inevitably though, CNN -- particularly American Morning -- chose to wear down and ultimately piss away this asset in favor of an on-air acquisition that fell right in line with the tried-and-true "TV" sententia: Veronica De La Cruz. The network never considered for a minute that new media might behave differently than television -- that the regular rules might not apply.

And that's the problem.

As far as CNN (and to be fair, the mainstream TV press in general) believes, it still sits comfortably at the top of the food chain, unthreatened by any possibility of a major paradigm shift being brought to bear by a horde of little people with laptops and opinions. Although the big networks recognize the need to appeal to bloggers, they don't fear them -- and that means that they don't respect them. Corporate-think dictates that the mainstream television press as a monstrous multi-headed hydra is the ultimate news authority and therefore is in possession of the one and only hotline to the ghosts of Murrow and Sevareid. Sure those bloggers are entertaining, but in the end they're really just insects who either feed off the carcasses of news items vetted through various networks or, when they do break stories, want nothing more than to see themselves granted an audience by the kingmakers on television.

This, of course, is horseshit.

During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.

I mentioned calling Jacki Schechner -- so what did she tell me?

"Think about how frustrated and disillusioned most of the American Morning staff is."

Not simply frustrated and disillusioned, but outright miserable.

And then she reminded me that in the past year-and-a-half, nearly 20 mid to high-level people have left American Morning; many of them quit with no other job to go to -- they just wanted out of the business. That speaks goddamned volumes, not simply about the show but about the state of the entire profession.

CNN fired me, and did it without even a thought to the power that I might wield as an average person with a brain, a computer, and an audience. The mainstream media doesn't believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they've never been more wrong.

I'm suddenly in a position to do all three, and I know now that this is what I've been working toward the last few years of my career.

Awhile back I was watching a great documentary on the birth of the punk scene, it closed with former Black Flag frontman and current TV host Henry Rollins saying these words: "All it takes is one person to stand up and say 'fuck this.'"

I truly hope so, because I'm finally doing just that.

And I should've done it a long time ago.

Follow Chez Pazienza on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chezpazienza

Comments

[Dunnsidhe]

WooHoo! Stand and deliver, good citizen!

[ciaracat]

great column. I live in Europe and I was rather startled to see the difference between CNN and CNN international. Lou Dobbs is amazing. I still recall the last text I saw on the screen in very large letters - "THE COMING HISPANIC JIHAD"

The Bushies have won. Every point of view is valid!

[djreedps]

When I see bullshit stories on TV news anymore, I think about how reporters used to dread doing the stories about dog weddings. Now, it appears that the news models on TV all fight over who gets the privilege of doing the dog wedding story.

I think that if we didn't have the Internet and blogging, the United States would already be under a complete totalitarian Christianofascist regime of Bush and company, and that the United States Constitution would be completely dead without any chance of ressurecting it.

Just think of what would have happened if Rupert Murdoch had swallowed up the major networks before the days of cable. The United States would still be fighting the war in Vietnam and Nixon would never have been brought down.

[sawdustinhershoes]

I agree wholeheartedly. The TV and radio "news" weren't doing their job, except NPR and PBS. Then the Bush appointees started requiring their programming placed on PBS and NPR. They, in fact, started an all-out effort to get rid of them. When that didn't work, they got their own programming, like The Wall Street Journal Report, placed on PBS. It didn't last long. I'd like to think they were embarrassed when regular PBS viewers complained about the dishonesty and blatant inaccuracies in their "reporting­."

What really got my attention, though, was a small reference to moveon.org on TV one night. I looked them up on the internet and joined. The rest is history.

Over a million people joined and began working with moveon. I don't always agree with them, but they started a movement that others copied and that provided a forum for The People.

We see the end result of the misbehavior of the Bush Crime Family. I believe it's fixable.

Indeed, I believe the pendalum has swung much futher to the left than anyone could have guessed.

I am elated to see so many good people working hard to bring this country back to its core values. If Bush's behavior had been more subtle and nuanced, I don't think the shift would have been so dramatic.

So, hubris, as always, brings down the idiots.

[4State]

Well spoken!

I'm elated too; just look at the voting numbers in the primaries. They tell the tale, and it will look this way in November if we don't take our collective eyes off of the prize: our country, freedoms, rights and environment restored.

Hubris bringing down the idiots: indeed, as it has been throughout history.

Pride goeth before the fall, especially false pride.

[AGNESMEO]

Good for you! Tell them that you were thrown out of better places than CNN! Good for you to say how facist Lou Dobbs really is and how he is treated like the second messah in the media. I hate watching the news, especially CNN just because of the corporate bias which oozes from the screen!

You done good kid! I am proud of you!

[NicoleAnonymous]

I just read your entire piece - I didn't have time before and I think you're very upset and emotional now and that is normal. Unless someone has gone through the experience of losing a job they don't realize how traumatic it is and people go through stages similar to grieving - shock, disbelief, anger, then eventually acceptance. Right now you're at the angry part and you want to express that but you should remember that ANY public statements you make now might prevent you from getting a job in the future because the company thinks "do we really want to hire this person when he might criticize us publically and generate negative publicity for us if it doesn't work out?" or "should we really hire someone who takes revenge on a company online?"

Everyone here who tells you "just keep writing!" and "don't let them get you down!" don't care about you, they aren't looking out for you, they aren't thinking about what this might do to your future career and frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. Take some time to absorb what happened, focus on finding something else and please forget about this:

"The mainstream media doesn't believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they've never been more wrong.

I'm suddenly in a position to do all three, and I know now that this is what I've been working toward the last few years of my career."

[Libsrule]

Please forget about this???

Seriously?

This ain't like losing a job at BK. We are talking about a large news corporation whose views and opinions actually make some people's minds up for them.

Their inner workings and how they treat people are NOT to be forgotten about. To make a lame comment that no one cares about you is irresponsible.

We the people NEED to hear from those who have first hand experiences into the inside workings of someplace like CNN and others and tell us The People what is being hand fed to us.

Get past this?

NOT!

[NicoleAnonymous]

You don't seem to understand my point. I didn't say we don't care about what happened or about how they treat people. I said people here who are encouraging him to make public statements about what happened aren't people who are thinking about his future or care about him the way family and friends do. Someone who knows and cares about him would say that right now the most important thing is for him to take some time to absorb what happened and NOT MAKE PUBLIC STATEMENTS because THEY COULD BE USED AGAINST HIM in the future when other companies are thinking about hiring him.

Also if you think what they did to him was bad then you haven't worked in many companies. I could tell you some things that are much worse than this. Most companies don't treat people decently - his experience really isn't that unusual. I've heard about it happening to people who have spent THEIR ENTIRE CAREER at a company and then the comany gets rid of them.

[JustMyWords]

Oh, lordie, I can hardly catch my breath for laughing..­.. Newsflash (pun somewhat intended): if he's gonna be blackballed by CNN - and I'd say better than even money the answer is "yes" - it's gonna happen whether or not he blogs about the situation. The good news is that since the media isn't the real world, it's also at least even money that for every outlet that shys away because of this, there'll be another one that wants his work BECAUSE of it.

[Coyotehunter]

NicoleAnoymous must work in CNN's HR department.
Personally, I'd like to see a network go hire people like Chez and tell them they will be fired for " kids and dogs" stories.
Infotainment ain't news, Nicole.

[cantankerousoldbabe]

You go Chez! Some of us have become so disgusted with the utter crap being flogged as journalism on television that we have long refused to tune in. We even cancelled our cable subscription last year, so we can't receive any TV broadcasting. I feel free!

[sedum]

CNN is even sleasier than FOX in the way they pretend some balance. Jon Stewart and Judge Judy's rare visits are the only reason ever to watch.

[BillCarson]

Dear Mr. Pazienza,

FYI...

http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/jobsdatabase/

http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/aboutpbs_jobs.html

Good luck!

[NicoleAnonymous]

I think many people who have grown up with online social groups and people writing about themselves on "secret" blogs need a dose of reality - first of all, absolutely NOTHING you write online is "secret" and there isn't any way to ensure people who aren't your intended audience won't see it. If you want to write personal thoughts, and you should because sometimes it helps you through difficult times in your life, the best thing to do is write in a journal, send people email or letters - do ANYTHING except write online.

But I also think you should consider legal action because I work in major company and I'm slightly familiar with HR and they MUST show you the employee handbook and read it WITH you and ask if you have questions and then you sign a form that you have read everything in the handbook and it doesn't seem like they did that with you.

[FaaLaveLave]

I have to tell you that I quit watching CNN when Aaron Brown was disappeared in favor of the inexperienced Vanderbilt kid. Never have watched the cesspool at Faux and am now limiting my viewing of MSNBC to Olberman and Abrams. The nightly MSM news programs no longer exist as far as I am concerned.
99.9% of my news facts come from online sources.
The high and mighty MSM "news gods" had better wake up and change their ways. You, Chez, are well out of that fraudlent professional group.

[ciaracat]

Without knocking anyone I REALLY miss Aaron Brown. I thought he was excellent. Today is just more of the standard fare.

[BlueInARedState]

Welcome to the fight, Chez.

[MichaelGeneSullivan - Huffpost Blogger]

The second time I saw Glenn Beck's show was the thing that convinced me to cancel cable. Really. I'd held on until then to continue to get news from CNN, but that show brought clearly to the front that CNN was not a news network anymore - just bad entertainment.

Of course online I have to wade through biased rants, but at least I know that somewhere on the net the news is reported - I just have to find it.

[LeslieGriffith]

yeah baby! welcome to the unemployed who at least walked away with a shred of dignity.

Warnings: don't drink before ten in the morning.

Don't take the anti depressants. they will dull your mind. keep writing (everyone at cnn is on them but you're not suppose to know.)

and if you do journalism that insults corporations after you leave a network, get a good alarm system and a guard dog.

have fun

[HDR]

Gee, how do I start a blog in order to get fired?!

Just keep writing, Chez.

[shortlikeyoda]

Chez,

Right now I am watching MSNBC's Chris Matthews blab and pontificate on what will happen in Wisconsin and down the road in the primaries. On his show are all white men. Amazing. It's the 21st century and yet MSNBC's election coverage is headed my mostly white men.

As you touched upon, the corporate media giants are stuck in a conservative paradigm of thinking that, historically, reminds me of the same track of thought by the Detroit Big 3 Automakers in the 1970's. The repercussions of their failure are still being felt in many areas and some could argue, a beginning of America's fall as an economic superpower.

The "blogasphere" is reporting news that is just as competent, more than current, and touches upon what is really going on Middle America. I know I couldn't have been the only who laughed when the popular media acted shocked at how discontented the American voting public during the cacuses and primaries. And I know I am not the only dismayed by the fact that most of the big media covering this have no clue what the middle class is really feeling right now.

Like auto buyers in the late 70's and early 80's, we now have choices. We no longer need to turn on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox. All a person need is a few free minutes, a computer, and enough brain power to discern what is really going on, out here in the wilderness.

We have all had our Office Space moments. I once had a boss tell me write a managers report in "that pretty cornflower blue and in comic sans" because it's easier for her and other managers to read. It's amazing how people behind closed doors really think, isn't it?

This has been a great blessing for you. The frustration you may feel about being fired is minor to the opportunities that now lay the the new path before you.

Best of luck!

[Delphine]

Congrats on the little bundle on its way, Chez.

What if all the disgruntled Journalists and George Soros or someone came up with an alternative cable news network? People powered news. Not a liberal network, a NEWS network. To the extent the truth is liberal (and it largely is), so be it. Not beholden to corporate money, such a network wouldn't have to start to pander for ratings with salacious gossip stories and fringe angermongerers like Glenn Beck and Shrill O'Lielly. CNN used to be all news, not a peppering of news over shows based on polemics which edify us not at all (as Jon Stewart pointed out so eloquently).

Every once in a while I catch BBC News and they do a much better job reporting what's going on here (and having people on to comment who actually know something rather than people who jaw on without any knowledge whatsoever).

It's a shame what's happened to journalism in this country. Only by removing the corporate influence can we get it back to its glory.