Saban will do better on TV than Brady

Talented students interested in TV sports journalism can get good jobs. But they aren’t ever going to become a football gameday analyst in a booth or a studio for a national network because those precious few jobs belong to former athletes or coaches.*

This football season, major networks added two really big names from those categories -- Nick Saban as an analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay and Tom Brady as No. 1 analyst for Fox Sports’ NFL broadcasts.

Based on a small sample size, I foresee that Saban will perform better in his role than Brady will in his.

Saban works hard to excel at whatever he does and I think that shows in his new role. In three GameDay appearances so far, he’s offered some pointed, welcomed commentary -- talking, for instance, about evidence that his players were solicited to transfer immediately after his retirement and noting that tons of NIL money doesn’t do any good if it’s spent on the wrong players. (The latter remarks included the s-word profanity, which is OK on ESPN but would have drawn a Federal Communications Commission fine on ABC.)

He's even been amusing, such as ribbing Florida State fans that he had nothing to do with his team getting picked over theirs for the playoffs last year. And the notoriously media-averse coach caused the head of every sports writer in Alabama to explode when he said of his new job: “Now I’m in this world. This is my gig, and it’s hard.”

I suspect ESPN is loving the dynamic it has created between the mostly serious Saban and the shtick of co-panelist Pat McAfee as a developmentally stunted frat bro.**

Brady, in his first broadcast Sunday, didn’t offer much game insight beyond what knowledgeable viewers could see for themselves. I expected more revealing analysis from the best quarterback of all time. He was excessively repetitive in his major points, too.

He had good moments when he discussed a quarterback’s view of man-to-man vs. zone coverage and the complexities of the Dallas defensive coordinator’s schemes. He had a lucky moment when he brought up the havoc caused by Dallas defender Micah Parsons, then Parsons immediately made a big play. Brady had multiple bad moments when he bypassed chances to talk about Cleveland quarterback Deshaun Watson’s inadequacies, suggesting that he’s going to protect the men who play his former position.

Brady, who I’m sure will get better, made some decent attempts at humor and personality. I thought “I can’t hit a sand wedge 71 yards” in reference to a possible 71-yard field goal attempt was pretty good.

Beyond individual moments, there’s a troubling issue with Brady. He has a conflict of interest between his broadcaster role and the NFL’s pending approval to make him a 10% owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. The NFL has restricted his freedom to criticize the officiating and banned him from team facilities and broadcast pre-production meetings with coaches and players. Fox Sports obviously doesn’t care, and Brady does have other avenues of access to the pre-game information that any good analyst needs. So he can overcome the restrictions. But the ownership angle still makes a viewer wonder if he’s going to feel more beholden to the league and its people than the typical announcer.

Saban has a conflict of interest, too, but of a different kind. He’s still a paid employee of the University of Alabama ($500,000 per year). With his status, Saban doesn’t need to worry whether anyone at UA might get angry or punitive, and unlike Brady, there aren’t restrictive rules. But one question going forward is how bluntly Saban will talk about Alabama and the SEC. How much, if at all, will loyalty or bias influence such commentary? So far, he’s picked Georgia, not Alabama, to win the SEC. He’s also said good things about Hugh Freeze at Auburn. Thankfully for the current job, bluntness is a Saban trademark, as is his desire to do every job right. But each viewer can decide for themselves what they think they’re hearing.

In the bigger picture, that’s always the problem when coaches and athletes become media commentators. What are viewers hearing? Hopefully it’s highly informed truth, not loyalty to a brethren. I don’t trust networks to make sure it’s the former. Certainly networks value the distinctive experiences and knowledge that former coaches and athletes bring, but I think the executives care more about the star power of big names. Over time, it’s up to Brady, Saban and other second-career TV sports analysts to prove themselves. Which sometimes happens, and sometimes never does.

* Rece Davis of ESPN College GameDay is a graduate of my UA department but I consider him more of a host than an analyst. And a few true journalists, such as Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports, get on-air studio time in football reporter roles.

** GameDay ratings so far this season have been exceptionally good.

Hannity got bashed so it’s only fair to bash the liberal ones, too

ana navarro, an anti-trump republican, cnn political commentator and a host on abc’s “the view,” speaks at last week’s democratic national convention.

For several semesters, Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity was a featured PowerPoint slide in my lectures on media ethics and conflicts of interest -- specifically, his speaking at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in November 2018.

If you work in the news media, you shouldn’t play prominent roles in political activities. Your organization likely prohibits it, in fact.* This falls in the “duh” category of avoiding real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Commentators for various liberal news organizations and media watchdogs rightly took Hannity to task. Multiple Fox News journalists anonymously expressed their own outrage toward Hannity. In a vague and performative gesture to try not to appear blatant in its pro-Trump propaganda, the network issued a statement that it does not condone its talent participating in campaign events and that it had internally “addressed” the “unfortunate distraction.”

Move now to last week when CNN political commentator Ana Navarro served as host of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night and political activist Al Sharpton, host of a weekly news talk show on MSNBC, was among the DNC’s speakers on Thursday night.

Neither network seemed to have a problem with this, and I didn’t hear or read any alarm from anyone who jumped up and down about Hannity six years ago. What’s the difference?

For one, slamming Fox News is (understandably) a favorite pastime of the liberal media. For two, Kamala Harris is a lot more politically tolerable to the liberal media than Trump. I’ll go further. The threats posed by Trump are so ominous that CNN and MSNBC may have felt justified to ignore traditional conflict of interest rules in order to boost the cause.

Or, to be more crassly practical, CNN and MSNBC may simply have wanted the status boost.

al sharpton, founder of the national action network and host of politics Nation on msnbc

I can offer some arguments why it’s not necessary to worry about journalism ethics here. Start with the question of whether news talk show hosts and commentators are journalists or merely opinion givers who don’t need to be neutral and can play by looser rules. To be even more insulting, maybe they’re just entertainers.

Also, bias that’s on public display is less troubling than hidden bias because at least the public can see it and take it into account when assessing the persuasiveness and credibility of TV talking heads.

Regardless, high-profile political activity by members of the media, even opinion givers, is bad practice. It moves from commenting on the news to influencing it.** It also allows the audience to think – in some cases correctly – that a politically involved commentator is actually just a PR agent for a candidate or a party, with no chance of ever offering a critical opinion, even if facts warrant one.

* Almost all news organizations prohibit not only participation in campaign events but also campaign donations, yard signs and bumper stickers, and other forms of political involvement.

** One of its stars speaking at a campaign rally is not Fox’s most egregious example of influencing the news off the air.

This time, media have actually done some good work on Trump

Donald Trump came out of hiding last week for a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home and the performance of the press triggered a wave of media criticism the likes of which I haven’t seen in a long time.

A livid Lawrence O’Donnell spent 20 minutes of his MSNBC talk show Thursday night slamming cable networks, including his own, for broadcasting the press conference live without immediate fact checking and for failing to give that same live coverage to Kamala Harris’ campaign event that day. He slammed the assembled reporters in Mar-a-Lago for timid questioning and lack of followups, allowing Trump to skate by with lies or incomprehensible non-answers. (On Sunday, NPR published a story that counted 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes.)

“It’s 2016 all over again,” O’Donnell said. “The same mistakes are being made. I have never seen an industry slower to learn from its own stupid mistakes than the American news business. And you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years: How to cover a Trump for president campaign.”

Will Bunch, the excellent national opinion columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer (and a former Birmingham News colleague), noted on X that, remarkably, no one asked Trump about a Washington Post report that he may have received $10 million from the Egyptian government while he was president. No one asked about Project 2025 either.

In a Facebook post, John Mangels, another top-notch ex-colleague from The News, called the press conference “flat-out journalistic malpractice.” He also cited a Washington Post headline that labeled Trump’s answers as “meandering.” Mangels saw them as “clear evidence of cognitive deficit.” The New York Times wasn’t much better in recognizing the main takeaway. Its lead angle was that Trump tried to reclaim media attention from Harris (and it worked!).

One White House correspondent posted on X that the Trump campaign chooses the reporters who travel with him and that only certain other reporters got early alerts to the press conference in Palm Beach. That could explain at least some of the inadequate questioning. But the media criticism seems fair.

The bigger consideration is whether this episode reflects continuation of a press whitewash on behalf of Trump. Since he came on the national political scene, certainly we’ve seen too many stories that failed to fact check, used too many euphemisms, forcibly extracted meaning out of gibberish, and made him seem like a normal candidate engaged in semi-conventional politics.

But maybe journalists are getting an unfair rap. Erik Wemple thinks so.

a link to erik wemple’s column is in the post.

Wemple, the media critic for The Washington Post, published a listt of more than 200 news articles and commentaries by national print/online news organizations between November 2022 and July 2024 that addressed the agenda, actions and authoritarian dangers of Donald Trump. (Wemple didn’t include all such stories nor hundreds of cable news segments.) Wemple’s point: No, the news media are not giving Trump a pass. And yes, they are addressing the potential consequences of this election, not just the campaigning. So give the media some credit.

Or not. They can’t do the job only sometimes.

Reporters can’t get numb to Trump’s habitual antics and claims to the point that they see them as repetitive and no longer newsworthy enough to challenge or to highlight. Much of the reading and viewing public have short memories. And reporters wouldn’t want to miss a possible big story: That the Republican nominee’s incoherence may be getting worse. Now there’s a lead angle.

The obligation of journalists is to deliver their best, most aggressive accountability journalism every day, every story, every press conference, especially during an election campaign with as much riding on it as this one.

News media need a plan for dealing with Kamala Harris slander

criticism of kamala harris’ laugh is petty and irrelevant. SOME other criticisms, though, are destructive and reprehensible.

Do you know how long it took after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race for some Donald Trump supporters to publicly slam Kamala Harris with sexist and racist criticisms? Trick question. It started before he withdrew.

And it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Ethical news media have to figure out if and how they give it attention and whether their same ol’ same ol’ practices are going to work for one of the country’s most monumental elections ever.

Opposition attacks on the actions, policies and credentials of any political figure are relevant and newsworthy, even if they’re false. Wrong statements are the unfortunate price of having the open civic conversations that we need. And I still believe in the ability of the press to “knock down” falsehoods if they do it immediately and forcefully with facts.

But criticism rooted in mere demographics is a whole different category. The prospect of America’s first female president – and oh my gosh she’s of mixed race too – has triggered the worst of the Trump supporters to spew blatant racist and misogynistic vitriol in interviews and on social media. (This happened in 2020 too.)

Harris is inarticulate (Kellyanne Conway). She’s lazy (Conway again). She’s annoying (Republican National Committee). She has no children of her own (former Ron DeSantis campaign official Will Chamberlain). She slept her way to the top (Megyn Kelly, Milo Yiannopoulos and Trump himself). She’s at the top only because of DEI (Republican U.S. Reps. Tim Burchett and Chip Roy).

Such remarks are hateful, of course, and perpetuate highly destructive stereotypes about Blacks and women.

Stuff like this will spread uncontrolled on social media, but what should more responsible news media do? There’s a persuasive argument that they should report on it because such nastiness – whether it represents true belief or merely a low-road political tactic – is a measure of candidate character and ethics that the public deserves to know about. It may also suggest a candidate bereft of legitimate criticisms.

Here's the big problem with that argument: The noble calling out of hateful rhetoric gives it greater circulation, or as academics say, amplifies it. And it’s getting amplified to segments of the public that are gullible. While it may simply harden the existing views of some people, it’s alarming to think such garbage might sway even a few minds in a massively consequential presidential election that figures to be close.

The news media are “a powerful mediator between candidates and the voting public either by unwittingly supporting the racial message agenda of candidates or by confronting or refusing to communicate a racial frame of reference for a given contest,” researchers Charlton McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo wrote* in 2011.

I like confronting, which to me means exposing motive, explaining dog whistles, and clear labeling of racism/sexism in publication. But we may stand at a moment when it’s necessary for the media to consider refusing.

Stuck in my traditional ways, I think we need to know everything the Republican nominee for president says. But I’d be fine if for the next three months journalists chose to ignore the surrogates and sycophants supporting him when they engage in offensive commentary like we are seeing against Kamala Harris.

With stakes this high, customary reportage, no matter how confrontational, may fail the nation.

 *Credit to my colleague Dr. A.J. Bauer for calling my attention to this reference

Why lots of news media are beating up on Joe Biden

I honestly don’t believe nefarious reasons are at work in the avalanche of news stories and commentaries about Joe Biden’s mental fitness. It comes instead from some conventional journalistic behaviors that are currently on steroids.

The avalanche is measurable. Media Matters found that five major national publications wrote 97 articles about Biden’s age or mental ability between mid-January and mid-June. Donald Trump? 10.

The one-sided barrage is not due to orders from the corporate offices. It is not because of the readership and viewership that a Trump presidency would bring (again). And it is not because most national political reporters and opinion writers – those who aren’t right wing propagandists at least – privately support Trump. There’s no agreement anyway on whether Biden’s withdrawal would help Trump or hurt him.

Other explanations are involved, starting with the essential purpose of reporting on the actions and deliberations taking place within the Democratic Party. The Republicans’ candidate isn’t going anywhere but the Democrats’ guy might be. (We can have a discussion another day on how much the party’s panic is due to the public’s panic due to the media’s panic following the first presidential debate.)

It doesn’t end there. I see other influences from the nature of political journalism, and even if I don’t think they’re nefarious, that doesn’t mean they’re harmless:

• National political journalists hate to open themselves up to claims of bias or uneven coverage by either side of the political spectrum. They are especially sensitive to this complaint from conservatives, even when unequal coverage is justified by facts. So, after constant bashing of Trump and Republicans, we are seeing some defensive overcompensation now. It’s reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

• National political journalists (and all journalists) prefer story angles that are new. They, along with big chunks of the public, have understandably become numb to the many older, repeatedly documented defects of Trump, including mental defects. “People already know about that” is the wrong conclusion, however.

• Speaking of new angles, if a recently emerged storyline was initially hidden by the government or a campaign, reporters get annoyed. That annoyance may show in volume of coverage. Media critics have differed on whether the press got fooled on the Biden acuity story.

• National political reporters understand the importance of substance – policies, campaign platforms, track records – but they love to write about political process. I think many of them would welcome months of unprecedented stories about chaos and resolution within a major political party if Biden steps aside.

• As with process, they love to write about candidate style. Many political reporters and talking heads get hung up on image and mannerisms because they believe those are fundamental to electability. And that may be so. But they are much less relevant to effective governing.

The big question surrounding Biden now is whether the slow walking, the soft talking and the stumbles in spontaneous speech and thought reflect a cognitive decline that would interfere with non-spontaneous decision making. Evidence for both “yes” and “no” continues to emerge, including Friday night’s interview with ABC in which I thought Biden did OK but network analysts jumped all over him immediately afterward. I think some news reports have overlooked excellent articles (even by their own organization) cautioning that outward signs are not a good measurement of cognitive capability.

Regardless, the laser focus continues, even as it seems horrifyingly one-sided. But most national political journalists seem to find the mix of legitimate concern, political process and candidate style too irresistible to put a limit on it.

CNN debate format was an enormous blunder

PHOTO CREDIT: AUSTIN STEELE/CNN

The flaws in how CNN conducted the first presidential debate Thursday night were foreseeable and then magnified by actual events.

As a result, everyone is talking about the donkey in the room and barely about the elephant.

A brief review of the good and the awful of CNN’s format:

• No studio audience: Smart move.

• Muted microphones when the other guy spoke: Smart move.

• Order of topics: Abysmal judgment. The questions about the main concerns particular to each candidate needed to come first, not last. Order conveys importance. It is not bias to recognize that Donald Trump’s past and planned efforts to establish authoritarian rule are an abnormally important issue.

• No real-time fact checking: A completely irresponsible decision. This wasn’t a heat-of-battle failure by the moderators, either. It was a derelict plan adopted beforehand. This would be a mistake no matter who the candidates were. To do this with Trump is mind boggling.

Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did well at repeating questions when a candidate’s first answer was evasive. But that’s not fact checking. Leaving it to candidates to accurately correct each other is fantasyland. The audience needs the credibility of a detached journalist. CNN eventually did provide detailed fact checking -- after the debate. Too late.

In a poll published Saturday by Data For Progress, 53% of 800 likely voters who watched or read about the debate said the moderators did not do enough to fact check the candidates.

The troubling consequence of CNN’s format is that Trump’s deranged statements and torrent of lies – three times as many falsehoods as Joe Biden – floated uninterrupted into the public consciousness. Recognizing that he wasn’t going to get called out, Trump got more deranged and the lies more torrential as the debate went on.

To compound the problem, most media conversations after the fact focused not on Trump but on Biden’s oral coherence. (For both of them, mental competence is a legitimate issue to evaluate; you just have to decide if you think 90 very bad minutes of spontaneous thinking and speaking sufficiently measures Biden’s mental competence.)

TV networks shouldn’t produce debates that have no method for real-time accountability. Networks need off-stage fact checkers who feed information to moderators, plus designated minutes for moderators to confront candidates about their falsehoods. Even if it means one candidate gets more questions than the other. Even if it means a longer debate.

Another proposal is one I advocated a year ago and that drew more than normal disagreement from readers: Record debates live but show them hours later. This allows for addition of on-screen graphics that address any misstatements not adequately remedied during recording.

I’m aware some number of viewers liked the minimalist moderation Thursday night. Don’t care. CNN is not excused.

Missing piece of Trump case coverage: The jurors

No one has published any interviews so far with members of the Manhattan jury that found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying records last week, but I’m certain multiple media outlets are trying.

Juror names and addresses were shielded from the media and the public but I think it’s inevitable that enterprising reporters will eventually find a juror or two who is willing to talk. That’s usually what has happened with high-profile court cases in the past.

A juror might be willing to allow publication of their name, but it should be a slam-dunk decision by any media organization to allow anonymity if that’s a condition of getting the interview. That’s because – sadly but unsurprisingly – some people outraged by the verdict have posted threats of harm against the jury on fringe social media sites. Example: “We need to identify each juror. Then make them miserable. Maybe even suicidal.” Posts have also included names and personal information of individuals believed by posters to have served on the jury.

It's reasonable to think the media horde should just back off of the 12 individuals who had their lives disrupted by this civic obligation and who showed impressive courage to render this verdict in such a high-profile and divisive case. But the news value justifies the reportorial effort. And candidly, if Trump had been found not guilty of everything, then I’d really want to know why, so I can’t very well argue to leave the jury alone in the present circumstance.

Keep in mind that “reportorial effort” doesn’t mean harassment and browbeating of jurors, though they might consider it that. It simply means making contact to see if and when they want to talk, and respecting whatever that decision is.

Surely, no ethical media organization would reveal a juror’s identity against their will, even if it unfortunately happens on social media. I don’t think even Fox News would do that.

Student journalists shine in campus protest coverage

one of two gaza war rallies at the university of alabama on wednesday. (photo: riley thompson of the crimson white)

A student reporter at the Columbia Journalism School who is covering the campus protests there tweeted Wednesday that she was so overwhelmed that she had to quit … giving interviews to professional media.

On this story playing out around the nation, it’s the campus media that are leading the way.

There are reasons for that. Several universities in the midst of pro-Palestinian rallies and police countermeasures closed the grounds to everyone except students and faculty. Student journalists are also more likely to know the activists, who in turn are more likely to talk to fellow students than to the professional media whose coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza they haven’t liked. It also helps that staffs of campus media probably are more demographically similar to the protesters than the professional media are.

This has led to outstanding work by many student media outlets, both print/online and radio. (The Crimson White gave prominent coverage to Wednesday’s peaceful double rallies at the UA Student Center Plaza.)

Producing these vital stories hasn’t been easy. At Columbia University, police told student reporters they would be arrested if they left the journalism building to report on the arrests being made in a nearby building occupied by protesters. (This was a comically ironic moment as next week Columbia will announce the Pulitzer Prizes. I look forward to the new category “Breaking News Reporting From A Distance That’s Acceptable To Us.”)

At New York University, police pepper sprayed a student newspaper photographer. At UCLA, the student paper tweeted early this morning that police forcefully clearing an encampment had threatened to arrest reporters. On Tuesday night, pro-Israel counter protesters sprayed and assaulted multiple reporters for The Daily Bruin, sending one to an ER.

On Wednesday, five national media associations wrote an open letter to college administrators: “Right now, the nation is turning to student journalists – people who know and live in these communities – for accurate and timely information. They are raising hard questions, verifying reports and supporting each other. What they are doing is essential to our democracy and embodies the values institutions like yours aim to instill in each and every student.

“We are horrified and dismayed to see student journalists and their advisers physically attacked, intimidated by police, and unfairly restricted in their access to their own buildings. Each of them is exercising the lessons imparted to them in their classes and student media operations. This maltreatment cannot continue.”

Do you solemnly swear to smile for the camera?

PHOTO CREDIT: THE FUND FOR MODERN COURTS (NEW YORK)

Very misleading subtitle on MSNBC a few days ago: “World watches Trump hush money trial.”

No, the world isn’t. Because TV news cameras aren’t allowed in the courtroom. And they should be.

Whatever you think of the merits of the Manhattan case against Donald Trump, this is a historic trial – the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. And while the public relies on reporters’ accounts and a few still photos, Trump uses televised statements in the hallway to distort the courtroom events taking place. I’d also like to witness his reported napping, since age and energy have become a 2024 campaign issue.

The extraordinary circumstances of this case aside, there are good reasons to allow TV cameras in most courtrooms.

Currently, federal courts do not allow them. Except in the few states where cameras are prohibited by law – and New York is one of them -- state courts usually leave the decision to local presiding judges or individual trial judges. Restrictions are intended to limit distractions, protect the comfort of participants, and prevent showboating by lawyers and witnesses. For decades, proponents’ best evidence has been the O.J. Simpson trial. But more significantly, many criminal defense attorneys believe cameras work against the fair trial rights of their clients.

That’s all reasonable, but the public benefits of courtroom cameras outweigh the concerns, especially since the concerns aren’t inevitable and could be mitigated if necessary.

Open courts are a foundational principle, and to extend that principle only to the limited number of seats in a room seems artificial. Broader exposure would help to educate the public about the process and presumably increase trust in it.

And if the process isn’t working as it should in particular cases, transparency provides the chance for accountability, a chance to call out and fix the failures and injustices. I suspect that’s why some judges and lawyers oppose cameras. It’s an additional, probably uncomfortable, level of public scrutiny. But with the high stakes of any trial, judges and lawyers should understand the necessity.

It can work. Put a stationary camera facing the judge and witnesses and another one facing the attorneys and defendant. A single feed for all media. Cameras seemed not to cause any big problems during the high-profile trials of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2021 and South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh in 2023, for examples. (The former occurred during the pandemic. For a different opinion on the latter and on courtroom cameras in general, read this.)

If the camera skeptics continue to prevail, live audio, as the U.S. Supreme Court does, would be better than nothing. But nothing may be all the public gets from three of the four pending Trump criminal cases, with the Georgia election interference case as the exception.

The news media want more, for the news value and for the ratings. To defend against claims of partisanship and favored treatment, the U.S. judicial system should want more, too.

Did a reporter really ask that question?

BALTIMORE MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT, FAR RIGHT, RESPONDED TO A CONTROVERSIAL QUESTION AT THIS MARCH 26 EARLY-MORNING PRESS CONFERENCE, FIVE HOURS AFTER THE FRANCIS SCOTT KEY BRIDGE COLLAPSED

It’s about five hours after a cargo ship hit the Key Bridge in Baltimore, collapsing it and sending six construction workers on the bridge into the water. The city’s mayor is holding a press conference when a reporter asks him: “How long is it going to take to rebuild the bridge?”

Calmly and immediately, the mayor responds: “We shouldn’t even be having that discussion right now. The discussion right now should be about the people, the souls, the lives that we’re trying to save. There will be a time to discuss about a bridge and how we get our bridge back up but right now there are people in the water that we have to get out.”

On social media, the mayor got mostly applause. The reporter got mostly ripped apart. One X poster wrote: “Shoutout to our mayor Brandon Scott for focusing on the people and showcasing empathy, because the nerve of that reporter to ask about the bridge repair. Like, sir read the (expletive) room.”

I understand why many people saw the reporter’s question as disrespectful to the victims. But I don’t have a problem with it. How about you?

It may have been an impossible question to answer so soon after the event, and perhaps a mayor isn’t the right person to ask. And knowing the press conference is a live broadcast, an acknowledgment of the loss of life from the reporter would have shown a sense of understanding.

But that question had to be asked. It’s a fundamental part of the story, with long-term implications for thousands of people. Pursuing all aspects of a major breaking news story does not mean indifference to the human tragedy. Nor does it prove backward news priorities. (And I’d say that regardless of the demographics of the victims.)

If that moment -- five hours in -- was too soon to ask about the bridge, I’m hard-pressed to pick the moment when it becomes OK. When everyone is known to have died? That was already certain. When each body is recovered from the river? That might never happen.

Clearly, though, much of the public thought that moment was completely wrong. It’s a reminder that journalists and the public often have different values. And one more example, even if not justified, of why so many people hold the news media in such low regard.