By Dave Walker
Was Thursday a great day to be a journalism prof or what?
First, The New York Times goes slippery-sourced scandal-wacky on John McCain - and the mysterious lobbyist-lady at the heart and other parts of the story worked telecom issues, no less! - then the mayor of a once-major American city challenges the news director of a local TV station to a throw-down in the station’s parking lot.
On the station’s own air.
Watch WWL’s video of the exchange here:
We’ll leave the McCain thing for the approximately 10 billion other bloggers who’ve been heatedly typing away on the issue to devote all of our attention on New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s zany Thursday morning appearance on WWL-Channel 4’s morning news.
Nagin regularly does the chit-chat thing with WWL’s morning hosts, but Thursday the dude went off. (We used to kind of like that. No more.)
First on the Times-Picayune for running a photo of the mayor holding a machine gun at a publicity event announcing that the police department had procured machine guns.
Then at WWL itself for a story slated to run on that very night’s 10 p.m. newscast.
“You know, we’ve talked about a lot of the progress, and in some ways a renaissance the city is going through right now,” said host Eric Paulsen, according to an online WWL transcript of the segment. “In many ways it is. I mean, 2008 has started off with a boom. Do you feel you get the kind of credit you deserve for that?”
Nagin: “I don’t think it’s really that relevant right now. My disappointment …”
Paulsen: “Would another mayor get credit for this?”
Nagin: “Probably. But my disappointment is the way some in the media are handling me personally.”
Here, he talked about the misleading machine-gun photo, for which the newspaper apologized in a front page correction, and to which I officially have nothing to add.
But then Nagin looked directly into the camera and, um, unloaded on WWL, a topic solidly on On (and Off) the Air turf.
“And I’m a little upset with this station, because you’re advertising about the ratings, about what’s getting ready to happen with my schedule,” Nagin said. “You put my personal schedule out there, I am coming back to the station and me and your news director are going to be outside in the parking lot having a good one-on-one.
“You do not put my family at risk.”
Paulsen: “This was a schedule from last year.”
Nagin: “I don’t care. That schedule has formal stuff on it. It has patterns on it, and now you have these Aryan race people focused on me, and you got some mental cases out in this community, and you’re getting ready to put my schedule out there. Where are the other elected officials’ schedule? Are you going to do a follow up on that? This has gone beyond the point of reasonableness.”
All this from a hardly-hardball setup question — “Do you feel you get the kind of credit you deserve?” — predicated by wonderment at the city’s renaissance.
Bottom line, it was an unintended February sweeps promotion that money just can’t buy.
The story had already been aggressively promoted on WWL’s air - hence Nagin’s weird “advertising about the ratings” reference — and video of the mad mayor streamed all day Thursday at www.wwltv.com.
Sure enough, the overnight rating for the 10 p.m. newscast in which the schedule story ran: 23.6, with each rating point representing about 6,000 households.
The overnight ratings for the prior Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night’s 10 p.m. newscasts on WWL, respectively: 14.6, 14.4, 14.6.
The story itself, reported by weekend anchor Lee Zurik, was fair, balanced, etc., etc.
Shown the schedule, veteran political observers split on Nagin’s work ethic - which was the whole point of doing the story, given Nagin’s widely held reputation as the crippled city’s absentee caretaker.
Nothing personal was revealed. In fact, some stuff in the mayor’s 2007 schedule (a public document that the station had to pry from the mayor’s office via public-information request), was noticeably blacked-out -done so well before Nagin’s on-air beefing began, said WWL.
And, nothing was changed in the story post-eruption, though Zurik did reference the mayor’s coffee-talk fit in his wrap.
As of mid-afternoon Friday, Nagin had called neither Zurik nor Chris Slaughter, WWL news director, to schedule the threatened parking-lot rumble.
Slaughter added that he didn’t see Nagin’s comments as fighting words.
“It was the mayor just being upset,” said Slaughter, who said he’s known Nagin, a former cable-TV executive, for more than 20 years. “On a personal level, I like Ray Nagin. I think Ray Nagin’s a nice guy. On a personal level, I think he’s got a different set of pressures in his position.
“I’d be glad to talk with him if he calls.”
Don’t sit by the phone, ND Slaughter.
Zurik said he made multiple fruitless attempts to contact Nagin to be interviewed for the schedule story.
“I don’t remember how many,” Zurik said.
Interestingly, Zurik said the public-records request that produced the schedule and subsequent dust-up was one of the easiest recent info-extractions the station has executed out of the mayor’s office.
“We received it pretty quickly, for the city,” he said. “They handed over the material quicker than most.”
And without any official concern expressed over the broadcast of whatever personal information the schedule might contain, added Zurik, who was in the shower when Nagin went off on the morning show.
“I was getting ready for work, and my cell phone rang and it was the station,” Zurik said. “Usually something is wrong when the station calls at 7:55 in the morning. I picked it up and said, ‘What’s wrong?’”
As Zurik toweled off, the mayor’s WWL morning hosts were exceedingly gracious on the air.
Concerned, even, for Nagin’s mental well-being.
“People who are listening to you speak, people who care about you, may be worried about you because of your emotional state,” said Sally-Ann Roberts.
(Possible alternative question: “You’re pissed? What about the city residents who filed 17,000 online complaints about blighted property to your administration’s Good Neighbor program only to discover that they’d all been ignored?” But I, a New Orleans homeowner whose flood-restored home overlooks an un-gutted house, digress.)
“Because it’s crossed the line, Sally,” Nagin continued. “It’s gotten personal now. I don’t appreciate the fact that I’m being exposed and my family is being exposed now. That was not part of this deal.”
Paulsen: “You’ve gotten a lot of heat over the past couple of years. I’ve never seen you this emotional.”
Nagin: “Well, because your newscast, the local newspapers, are feeding these awful, ugly talk shows that are feeding these blogs. If you go look at some of these blogs out there and some of the stories that come from the paper and you read the comments, it’s some
of the most vile, angry, people that I’ve ever seen in this community.”
Paulsen: “Are you concerned about your safety?”
(Alternative question: “Are you concerned about your safety … from the rampant and apparently unstoppable street crime in your own city?”)
Nagin: “I’ve got coverage. If somebody approaches me wrong, I’m going to cold-cock them. That’s the bottom line. You can come with that foolishness if you want, but you’ll see a side of Ray Nagin that you haven’t seen.”
“I was bothered by what I saw,” said Larry Lorenz, former chair of the communications department at Loyola University and current interim dean of the college of social sciences. “It seems to me that Nagin could take a lesson from Harry Truman. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Lorenz also chairs “Informed Sources,” WYES-Channel 12’s 7 p.m. Friday roundtable of local journalists.
“I thought that was uncalled-for,” Lorenz continued, of the latest Ray-being-Ray moment. “Particularly the talk about going out into the parking lot and fighting, especially in a community where violence so often seems to be the response to any kind of situation.”
TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504)826-3429.
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