Are talk shows journalism? Let’s make sure ours are Commentary originally published in Current, June 24, 2002 By Katherine Lanpher The call was meant to be a compliment, a voicemail message from a former print colleague of mine who had listened to that day's edition of Midmorning, a two-hour call-in show I host for Minnesota Public Radio. "I just want to tell you I really, really liked this morning's show, the questions were great, the callers were good . . . it was almost like journalism." I was stunned. Here I thought I had been committing journalism all along. But if listeners — even other journalists — aren't always sure about what they're listening to, then we need a call to arms for those of us who keep humming the rising tide of talk now heard on public radio stations: It's time for a serious conversation about public radio talk shows. Are they entertainment? Or journalistic venues? And if they're the latter, how do you maintain standards of accuracy, fairness and balance? How do I know we need this conversation? For one, I'm a print journalist who slid over to public radio nearly four years ago, ready to apply everything I already knew about journalism to this new medium. It was sometimes a bumpy transition. After all, when you're a reporter for print or broadcast, you often have the chance to track down the stray fact or the assertion that doesn't sound quite right. It's a little different when you're the host of a call-in show and John from Anoka is telling you his version of the conflict in the Middle East and his bumbling grasp of the facts is sliding right by you, out into the broadcast air. You don't have time to check; you do, however, have a responsibility to provide context. (More on that later.) How else do I know we need this conversation? Back in April, I was lucky enough to be one of the 50 or so producers, hosts, news directors and reporters who gathered for the first national conference on public radio talk shows, with Public Radio News Directors Inc. as one of the sponsors and held at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. The very first question that surfaced was whether talk shows are journalism. We had better hope they are. Otherwise, I would argue, there's no place for them in public radio, where listeners have an expectation and we have a mission to provide information that's free of cant, that invites insight and that helps listeners better perceive the world around them. But when, you might ask, did conversation become a journalistic medium? It's not such a new idea. Check out the book that resulted from the Committee of Concerned Journalists, The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, and you'll see a brief history on page 21. What we now regard as modern journalism "began to emerge in the early 17th century literally out of conversation, especially in public places like coffeehouses in England, and later, in pubs, or 'publick houses,' in America." The first newspapers, write Kovach and Rosenstiel, came out of those pub conversations, where people gathered to collect news. It's a long way from a publick house to public radio, but conversation is becoming another journalistic medium. It's also becoming a medium for entertainment — which is why it's crucial to make distinctions now between what makes a talk show and what makes a public radio talk show. Even as a journalistic medium, however, the talk format can be unwieldy, which is why we need to have more conversations about how to apply journalistic standards and how to arrive at conventions that can stretch from the most resource-rich station to those struggling with less. Whether you're hosting Talk of the Nation or a small community's weekly talk show, the standards and expectations should be the same. What are those expectations? Fairness, balance, accuracy and timeliness are good starting points. You can provide them by thinking of the listener first. That's your key to applying journalistic standards to the talk format. What serves them best? With the question of balance and fairness, for instance, the format can be especially challenging, requiring 360-degree vision, so you can consider all the angles. What do you do when you only have an hour? If the White House wants to promote single-sex public schools, for instance, do you have opposing guests from two Beltway think tanks, a duo of tweedy individuals who have debated each other so many times that they've memorized each other's talking points? Or do you look through your community or state for administrators of single-sex schools who can talk about the challenges of transferring the concept to a public setting? How much time do you give each guest? How many guests insure balance? Most importantly, how much time do you give, and how do you factor in the callers? Here's where knowledge of your audience can help you give them a well-rounded hour. Unlike a newspaper article or an audio story — where readers and listeners aren't part of the actual story — callers are one of the factors you need to balance. If you know from experience that you will get a wave of calls from listeners outraged at the prospect of federal tax dollars going to single-sex schools, then perhaps you schedule the hour to arc from a proponent of such an idea to the callers themselves, who are part of this story you're creating, live, on the air. How do you ensure accuracy? If you're the host or producer, you've done your reporting and you're ready to put into context any assertion that doesn't pass the smell test. You serve the listeners by alerting them that a caller's opinion might be easily challenged; you can do the same by having the guests respond. And you also have to be alert to challenge a guest opinion or assertion that might not match the facts; again, the key would be to alert the listener to the fact this might be opinion they're hearing or information that has been credibly rebutted in the past. What else serves your listeners? They need accurate information on the affiliations of your guests; it's easy for a listener to assume they are widely acknowledged experts. After all, public radio put them on the air. You need to provide the context for their inclusion — why you selected them and what positions they typically take on a particular issue. The point is to provide an independent forum where listeners can amass information, understanding that it's provided in the context of a conversation. There's a trade-off there — the format means the information is sliding by at a fast rate. A listener might need to check out an assertion later, when he or she has time. On the other hand, the format means that — unlike with a packaged story — listeners can actually take part in the process. At the PRNDI conference in April, Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan said he regarded each caller as a interview and what he looks for is not an opinion — but a story. "We're specialized storytellers," he said. "Opinions are boring, stories are interesting." And, in the end, that's often what journalism comes down to: storytelling. These stories are bound by conventions of craft and integrity, but they remain the connective tissue that knit us together — even on talk shows. Katherine Lanpher is host of Minnesota Public Radio's daily Midmorning call-in program and its book show Talking Volumes. She wrote for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 16 years before coming to MPR. In an earlier stint on commercial radio, she traded barbs with Jesse Ventura, then a radio personality.

Lanpher: "What should we expect from our talk shows? Fairness, balance, accuracy and timeliness are good starting points. You can provide them by thinking of the listeners first. What serves them best?"

	To Current's home page
	Earlier article: It's the callers that make talk shows work on public radio.
	Outside link: Website of Lanpher's Minnesota Public Radio talk show, Midmorning.

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