Journalism

Dispatch taps the broadcast and cable news veteran to lead its news and digital team at the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis.

The cable news veteran is named the station group’s chief national political analyst. Gray’s Sandy Breland: “With her decades of covering current events and legal issues, Greta will provide an in-depth look at issues that matter the most to our viewers.”

Only 21 percent of U.S. adults say they have “a lot of trust” in information from national news sources, according to 2018 data from Pew Research Center. Local news fares only marginally better, at 28%. It’s not news that trust in news is low. The question is what to do about it. An innovative story format piloted by Cronkite News at Arizona State University suggests one path.

Four print reporters, including one from The Associated Press, were barred from a press availability as Trump sat down for dinner with Kim, the leader of a country where there is no press freedom. That came after two of those reporters asked questions of the president during earlier events at the summit, including one query about upcoming congressional testimony from Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, that was critical of the president.

The stations will deliver real-time traffic and road updates to audiences in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Michael Cohen will be everywhere on Wednesday. His long-awaited testimony to the House Oversight Committee will be shown live by the broadcast networks and, of course, it will also be carried live by all the cable news channels.

Perry Wolff, a groundbreaking television producer whose documentaries took viewers on a tour of the White House with Jacqueline Kennedy and awakened them to widespread hunger in America, died on Feb. 17 in Portland, Ore. Wolff was credited as a writer, director or producer of some 600 hours of broadcasts over more than five decades, mostly for CBS News. His broadcasts won 17 Emmy Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in broadcast journalism and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary short film, for writing and directing An Essay on Matisse in 1996 for PBS.

CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste has over the last several months reported out a group of harrowing stories for CBS Evening News about a problem that has affected millions and is only now coming to greater light. Since last summer she kept tabs on legal probes into the behavior of Catholic clergy, and resulting investigations. When CBS News executives became aware of the reporter’s line on the story, they worked to broaden its exposure.

Jenna Bush Hager will join Hoda Kotb as the co-host of the fourth hour of NBC’s Today. She replaces Kathie Lee Gifford, who announced that she would step down in April.

The syndicated version of Dateline is currently in its second season airing on Fox Television Stations as well as leading station groups across the country and has been renewed for season three on Sinclair, Hearst, Tribune, Nexstar, Graham Media, Gray, Cox Media Group, Tegna, Scripps, Sunbeam, Weigel, Block, Hubbard and more.

The former WJLA Washington ND lands the top news spot at Meredith’s NBC affiliate in Nashville.

Arizona State University took top honors in a new contest aimed at showing broadcasters how younger viewers want to see TV news presented, and will accept the award at BEA’s annual convention during the NAB Show.

Facebook is showing a greater willingness to ax news programming that’s not working on Facebook Watch. In recent months, Facebook has been telling news publishers that it will only renew about a third of the existing news shows that it has funded for Facebook Watch.

Safety in the field is an increasing concern of news crews as violence against journalists grows.
The latest incident affecting a news crew, however, is just the most recent example of a problem just as pernicious and even more perennial. A KPIX San Francisco reporter and photographer, accompanied by an armed guard, were robbed at gunpoint Sunday.