You may remember a while back that an alligator killed a toddler at Disney World. I was curious to see if ABC News made any mention of it on their website at the time– I can’t bring myself to turn on Good Morning America and actually watch. The frenzied competition among network television news organizations for viewers has turned out to be much more damaging to our country than I could have imagined. The checks and balances that a vital independent media have on power were compromised long before this year by the pay checks and bank balances of those who put profits and their own well being ahead of serious and responsible journalism and the well being of the nation.
NBC was acquired by General Electric in 1986. That same year Larry Tisch who ran a hotel chain acquired a 25% stake in CBS and shortly afterward assumed control of the company. ABC was the last of the Big Three to succumb to a corporate overlord and I worked for ABC/Cap Cities/Disney for over a quarter of a century until 2010. The changes wrought by takeovers and technology during my career and especially in the last years of it were stunning and for me disheartening.
But it was in 1996 when we became Disney cast members, which is how all Disney employees are addressed, that I wondered how journalistic freedom and integrity at ABC News could be affected by our corporate owner.
I figured it might well mean if there were a news story that might be embarrassing to the company, my news bosses would have a decision to make– Do we treat it like any other story or do we go easy or maybe even go gutless and not cover it at all? Of course there would be denials all around that there was even a calculation to consider but really there hadn’t been an Edward R. Murrow willing to take on his network let alone a corporate giant controlling television news since well, Edward R. Murrow.
The missing boy at Disney World story was on the website the next morning and was reported on by GMA on their broadcast. That’s as it should be and I was glad. Side issue– It will be interesting to learn if the parents are eventually accused of negligent behavior like the woman whose child fell into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo in Cincinnati or agree to take a payout from Disney for their loss that prevents them any legal recourse.
But back to my attempt at a litmus test for Disney and ABC News after the takeover years ago… Back then I wanted to find a story that might challenge my old bosses to perhaps have to weigh whether to possibly incur the ire of their new bosses and choose to do a worthy story that could embarrass the Disney enterprise. It didn’t take very long for me to find what I felt was a candidate.
During that first year of the Disney/ABC marriage the movie studio released a remake of 101 Dalmatians with real actors and real animals and some interesting print stories about dogs in films got my attention. Sort of logically it turns out that when there’s a hit movie featuring a dog, kids want that breed as a pet for themselves. The Beethoven films a few years earlier had led to an increase in Saint Bernard sales.
On its own this phenomenon was probably not enough to warrant a story, but there was a another layer to it in the case of Dalmatians because there was a lot of apprehension in both the dog breeding and rescue dog communities about this particular breed becoming an overnight sensation. Dalmatians it turned out might be beloved and iconic at the firehouse but were an ill advised and even moronic choice as a dog in a home. Aside from general agreement that they were not great with children, I discovered that of all dogs Dalmatians had the highest incidence of a serious birth defect– deafness.
The Humane Society predicted animal shelters would be flooded with abandoned Dalmatians when the novelty of having one wore off and the reality of taking care of one set in.
This I considered a story and admittedly, a poke with a sharp stick to my bosses at World News Tonight to whom I pitched my desire to produce it. I waited for an answer and I waited and I waited some more. Then I pitched again and waited again and waited some more… After two weeks of silence from New York I figured I’d gotten my answer.
Maybe I was too early. The New York Times (see the article below and another one from the Daily Mail) was on it and published its article later. Maybe it wasn’t the ideal story proposal to make any conclusions about corporate influence and my news division’s independence but I’ll always wonder what the response might have been if we had been owned by GE or ourselves.
Link to the New York Times article…
After Movies, Unwanted Dalmatians
Link to the Daily Mail article…
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