Video from Channel One News – January 4, 2006
From Jim Metrock:
Rich DeMuro lays out the Jack Abramoff scandal for the student
audience. He mentions "clients" and "favors" but
fails to disclose the connection between Abramoff and Channel One
News.
DeMuro’s employer was a major Abramoff client for many years.
DeMuro probably wouldn’t be receiving a paycheck if it wasn’t
for Abramoff’s lobbying work from
1999 to 2004. Channel One News is a shell of what it once was,
but without Abramoff’s lobbying, the company may have been knocked
out in 2000. Abramoff kept government money flowing to an increasingly
sick Channel One.
Channel One paid so much money to Abramoff’s firms, Preston Gates
and Greenberg, Traurig, that several publications wrote articles
about C1N’s incredible lobbying expenses. Channel One and Jack
Abramoff were news.
Channel One should have written the script to say that "Channel
One News was a client of Mr. Abramoff’s for several years." That
is disclosure. That is respecting your audience. That is the minimum
expected in a new report.
However, Channel One doesn’t respect their audience. Jim Morris
the executive producer knows better. He knows disclosure was needed
in this story. DeMuro, the guy reading the teleprompter, knows
the audience that is trusting him deserves to know about this connection.
Journalism is a joke at Channel One News. Journalists have standards
and ethics and codes of conduct because they respect the consumer
of their work.
Come on, Channel One News, go out with some class and style.
"Fairness, accuracy, and objectivity
are the pillars on which any news organization stands. It is
in the trust of our viewers that the intrinsic value of Channel
One News actually exists, and if that trust evaporates, then
all the television sets, satellite dishes and other things
that we commonly misconceive for the service we provide becomes
virtually worthless. If they question our credibility, we are
powerless to do our job of shedding light on the difficult
and complex issues that are of such crucial significance to
emerging citizens."
From the foreword to "Channel One News
Standards" (1993)
