Ferguson: Tear Gas & Rocks Hurled at Media; Reporting from Ferguson: The Good, The Bad, The Ratings
STELTER: Welcome back. Let's put up on screen one of the defining visuals from the Ferguson this week. It's of President Obama addressing the nation, when viewers saw this surreal split-screen, one side the president appealing for peace, while the other side the beginnings of a riot in Ferguson. Obama sounded pretty self aware of what was happening.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know there's going to be some negative reaction and it will make for good TV.</s>STELTER: Good TV. Well, many agreed with him. One of my last guests, Wesley Lowery, called the violence on demand programming for the nation that flicks from one blockbuster event from the next. So, let me do something unusual here. Let me show you the ratings from Monday. On the left, these are the 9:00 p.m. cable news ratings for the Monday before the grand jury announcement. That's the total audience. On the right, that's the hour of announcement. You can see CNN with 6.2 million viewers while the announcement was coming in. That is more than any moment after Katrina. That's more than any moment after the Boston bombings. These are some of the highest ratings since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And these are the same ratings now but in the 25 to 54-year- old demographic that advertisers covet, 25 to 54-year-olds. You can see, CNN number one, FOX number two, MSNBC, number three. What's important here is the huge surge of young people that tuned in to see the grand jury announcement and then, unfortunately, to see the violence that followed afterwards. I heard many complaints about the coverage on Monday night. Here is one of them. Let me put up on screen. It's from conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. She tweeted this, "If the media pulled back half of the protesters would disperse and go home. Ferguson would be more peaceful." Is that true? Did the media proverbially, I don't know, fan the flames in Ferguson? Well, joining me now to help answer that question is Frank Sesno, the director of the George Washington School of Media Affairs, and Frank Absher, founder of the St. Louis Media History Foundation. Thank you both for being here. And, Frank Absher, let me go first to you since you're in St. Louis, you're in the region. What is your impression been of the national media coverage of the story? You have seen hundreds of reporters basically parachute into your community. So, what's been your overall reaction?</s>FRANK ABSHER, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ST. LOUIS MEDIA HISTORY FOUNDATION: One of the things that's stood out, Brian, is the fact that a lot of national reporters don't know the territory. As a result, there have been some very serious errors on their part in terms of reporting stuff that's not factual. Six weeks ago, we were told that Ferguson police chief was on the verge of resigning. It hasn't happened. We were told of a major riot in downtown St. Louis. In fact, it was nine miles away in a suburb of University City. And then, on top of that, we were told three floors of the Ferguson hospital had been set aside for injuries from the riots. There is no Ferguson hospital. No hospitals in the area had done that. The outcome is, in fact, that people will trust the media much less knowing that what is being reported is not factual.</s>STELTER: Frank Sesno, did you notice some of the problems, some of the same inadequacies in the coverage?</s>FRANK SESNO, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF MEDIA & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Sure. I mean, I think that what you have -- whenever you have a story like this is you have people helicoptering in as you say. They're instantly on the streets, and what they're able to do is cover the snapshot through the straw, exactly what they're seeing at that exact moment. What they don't have, what they don't know is the lay of the land, the personalities, the deep seated animosities, where they exist, and unfortunately, such things as whether there's a hospital or not. The problem is with a story like this and your audience numbers show it, the passions run so deep, the feelings run so deep, the perspectives of the white audience and the black audience are so vastly different and far apart that this is when it calls -- you know, when you want some knowledge on the ground. This is when the nuance in the reporting also matters.</s>STELTER: I put up those ratings, as you're saying Frank Sesno, because I think it's worth keeping in mind, these networks did have huge audiences for this. I should say, it was mostly commercial-free. It's not as if networks like CNN literally directly profited during the hours of the rioting. I think that's worth pointing out. But those ratings get to a point a lot of people online have said, did the networks want this to happen? Did the media want violence to happen? Frank Sesno, what's your take on that?</s>SESNO: Of course, the media don't, no. I think that's a very cynical thing to say. Media -- people don't sit around in editorial meetings at CNN or FOX or anywhere else saying, we hope there's violence so that it drives the ratings up. But you know that something is going to come along and you know that that is going to drive the audience. You know you're going to get an audience, maybe not this big, with a story like that, and you have to plan accordingly. But talking about the audience is getting way too cynical in this way. There is a major story. There is a major issue. And you got to cover it, and then it's a separate subject as to what the consequences of that are.</s>STELTER: Frank Absher, let me ask you --</s>ABSHER: Brian, I feel the same way here.</s>STELTER: I'm sorry, go ahead.</s>ABSHER: I feel the same way because while a lot of people are quick to criticize and say the media caused this by their very presence, at the same time, if the media had not covered it, they'd have been doing an extreme disservice.</s>STELTER: I want to share a tweet saying a broadcaster friend of mine calling television cameras the idiot maker. When the cameras are on them, the behavior becomes irrational. Frank Absher, is there some truth to that, to the idea that when the cameras are present, people act out for the cameras?</s>ABSHER: They do, but also when the national news media celebrities are in town, there's a crush to be a part of this, to be seen with them, to be associated with them. As a result, a lot of people got on television as expert spokespeople who, in fact, were not. The local people know who these folks are. The national media don't. One of the attorneys who was interviewed extensively at the beginning of all of this was in the process of facing disbarment, but the media didn't realize it.</s>SESNO: I want to jump in there, Brian, if I can, because I have been out on the streets with cameras in very strange places when things like this are going on.</s>STELTER: Right.</s>SESNO: What cameras do, they do change the dynamic. They magnify, they amplify, they certainly can distort, and they can antagonize people who are already out there because people who are out there see the cameras ABC News they may perform for them. It has an almost odd effect. There's a camera that's capturing you for the world to see, but in some strange way, there's an anonymity that brings because you feel or someone may feel they're part of something somehow bigger, and so, the danger with cameras always, always is that you're not just there tracking the news and recording the news. You may be helping to propel the news. And that's where this gets to be very dangerous and very delicate.</s>STELTER: A couple days after --</s>ABSHER: I'm not sure there's a solution for this.</s>STELTER: Let me play one sound bite from Darren Wilson because this big first interview that ABC's George Stephanopoulos incurred with Darren Wilson made a lot of news later in the week. Here's a sound bite from it.</s>DARREN WILSON, FORMER FERGUSON POLICE OFFICER: I felt like a 5- year-old holding Hulk Hogan. That's how big this man was.</s>GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Hulk Hogan?</s>WILSON: He was very large, very powerful man.</s>STEPHANOPOULOS: That moment before the second shot, you guys are staring at each other. And you said there was a look in his eye like something you had never seen before. You described it as a demon.</s>WILSON: Uh-huh. It was a very, very intense, intense image he was presenting.</s>STELTER: There has been widespread speculation that ABC somehow paid for this interview. ABC is denying that. Here's what they say, "We do not pay for interviews and there was no payment for this interview, period." But Frank Sesno, a lot of folks I have been talking to on Twitter don't believe that. The people who are pro-Michael Brown, anti-Darren -- you know, I hate to even put it in those terms, but it's how this story has become. They believe ABC did pay. Do you believe that there's any sort of possibility that maybe there was a licensing deal or some other sort of thing in an interview like this or would that have been too risky for ABC?</s>SESNO: We don't know, you know? I mean, this is one of the stories I'd like to know more about. When we talk about the coverage of this story, there are about 1,000 things I'd like to know more about, and one of them is, how did that interview take place? What was the degree of coaching that Wilson had there? Why was he the kind of interview subject that he was? I found it a strange and sort of clinical interview in many ways, not by Stephanopoulos' part, but by his part. So, the story behind the story on this one, I'd sure like to know.</s>STELTER: Frank Sesno and Frank Absher, thank you both for being here this morning.</s>SESNO: Thanks.</s>STELTER: And we have more to come, including this question, where is Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC News? It's been more than a month since she left the air. You know, she was in that Ebola quarantine. But she's still not back. I've got my reporting on that coming up. We're going to stay with Ferguson after the break because this one story could be viewed in two entirely different ways. Is it as simple as black and white? We will try to answer that when we return.