Journalism

Joe Ferullo: The final weeks of 2021 have seen a rush of commentary accusing mainstream media of accentuating Biden administration missteps, while ignoring significant accomplishments. But this is nothing new. It’s a hardened habit among the Washington press corps that traces its origins back nearly half-a-century, with the notorious scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. That’s not to say reporters should somehow ignore governmental failures, mistakes or corruption. This is more about what Washington correspondents, producers and editors consider important news day-in and day-out: What goes on page one; which story makes it into a broadcast’s first segment? Where is the balance? It would help viewers, readers, and voters if the media acknowledged that sometimes — even in Washington — good news is real news too.

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The New York State judge also ordered The Times to turn over physical copies and destroy any electronic versions of documents a lawyer prepared for the conservative group.

Going into 2022, the network’s alignment with Trump has it grappling with a pair of potentially catastrophic lawsuits. But its ratings are on top again.

In 2021, journalists around the world faced dire threats to their lives and freedom. The number of reporters jailed for their work hit a new global record of 293 in CPJ’s 2021 prison census, up from a revised total of 280 in 2020. Also so far in 2021, at least 24 journalists were killed as a result of their coverage.

Weeks after Kyle Rittenhouse said he wanted to “lay low” when he was found not guilty of homicide, attempted homicide and other charges related to last year’s fatal shootings that rocked Kenosha, Wis., the teen was welcomed Monday at a conservative conference to music, pyrotechnics and a standing ovation from thousands of attendees. Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two men and injured another during mass protests against police violence in August 2020, suggested Monday that lawsuits could be filed against media outlets for how they covered his murder trial.

A year ago, ABC’s World News Tonight was crushing NBC’s Nightly News by a gap of 1.7 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. As it stands today, Lester Holt’s evening news program is within about 900,000 total viewers of David Muir’s. That’s an improvement of about 47% from the chasm this time last year.

Black News Channel, which is known as BNC, announced layoffs just days before the Christmas holiday. “I am reaching out to you today with some very unfortunate news about a reduction in our workforce,” said President and CEO Princell Hair in an internal memo. It was not immediately clear how many staffers will be impacted by the cuts, but BNC employs roughly 300 people.

Kim Saxon becomes news director and Josh Morey is tapped as creative services director at Gray’s Atlanta duopoly.

TVNewsCheck’s annual conference’s return to in-person in December charted the forward trajectory news technology and storytelling will take in 2022. See all the stories and video here.

Docuseries mushroomed in 2021 as streamers ramped up their offerings, and viewers were the beneficiaries. The wide array of series ran the gamut from investigative to ruminative, tackling sports, crime and music. At their best, they stood tall against the year’s top TV series overall.

Fox Corp., the owner of Fox News, told employees that those working in New York City would have to show proof they’d had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine by Dec. 27, removing the option to get tested weekly instead. The new policy is in keeping with New York City’s vaccine rule.

Executives from Fox Corp., Tegna, Sinclair and Bitcentral at least week’s NewsTECHForum said the cloud has become an increasingly important tool for business recovery, even with the caveat that the public cloud can be subject to its own outages.

The year saw a continued pandemic and divisiveness over politics, race and social issues. As always, journalists were there to shine a light on it all.

WSFB in Hartford-New Haven, Conn.,  is a legacy station with a history of ratings dominance in the market over many decades. How does a TV station get there? And once there, what’s the secret to remaining on top?

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a technical director and a streaming executive producer for stations owned by Hearst and Capitol Broadcasting.

The Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire across New York City, and CNN is responding to this trend by closing its offices “to all employees who do not have to be in the office to do their jobs.”