By Phil Riske | Senior Reporter/Writer
(Editor’s note:Opinion pieces are published for discussions purposes only.)
As we well know, President Trump calls any news story he disagrees with fake news. First, it should be noted there is a wide difference between an inaccurate story and one that is out and out fake.
In the 70s, I had the privilege of working for the Des Moines Registerand Tribune, which at the time had more Pulitzer Prizes for journalism than any newspaper. The managing editor was Michael Gartner, considered one of the best newspapermen in the country.
In the 90s, NBC lured Gartner away from the newspaper, making him president of the news division at the TV news giant.
But for a puff of smoke, it all might have turned out differently.
What happened to General Motors in 1993 had nothing to do with the automaker’s massive layoffs and plant closings a few weeks ago.
A Trump’s allegation of fake news would have been proved in the case of a $105.2 million jury verdict awarded to an Atlanta couple whose son died when his GM truck exploded in a collision.
NBC News could have been touting itself for having exposed the danger of GM’s controversial ”sidesaddle” gas tanks in a riveting “Dateline NBC” segment. Instead the network burned its reputation, and the car company won in the court of public opinion the safety battle it had lost in the courthouse.
Here’s how it all came down.
Dateline’s report on featured 14 minutes of balanced debate, capped by 57 seconds of crash footage that explosively showed how the gas tanks of certain old GM trucks could catch fire in a sideways collision.
Following a tip, GM hired detectives, searched 22 junkyards for 18 hours, and found evidence to debunk almost every aspect of the crash sequence. In a devastating press conference, GM showed the conflagration was rigged, its severity overstated and other facts distorted. Two crucial errors: NBC said the truck’s gas tank had ruptured, yet an X ray showed it hadn’t; NBC consultants set off explosive miniature rockets beneath the truck split seconds before the crash — yet no one told the viewers.
Gartner said he simply screwed up by defending the Dateline piece. He resigned and returned to Iowa to publish a small community newspaper.
News media continue to believe being first with a story is the way to beat the competition.
Terrible strategy.
Being first means nothing when the story is built by media hucksterism.
