Last week, a reporter from St. Louis\u2019 KSDK-TV decided it would be a dandy idea to test the security measures of some local high schools<\/a>. His inquiry\u2014and suspicious-looking behavior\u2014at suburban Kirkwood High School caused administrators to lockdown the school for more than 40 minutes.<\/p>\n

KSDK likes to call itself \u201cNewsChannel 5.\u201d Its slogan, in recent years, has been \u201cWhere the News Comes First.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this instance, the news clearly\u00a0did\u00a0come\u00a0first\u2014but not in a good way. The news department\u2019s eagerness for a scoop really did come before everything else\u2014including common sense, journalistic ethics, and the emotional well-being of the locked-down students and their panicked parents.<\/p>\n

In a world that has almost completely disappeared, to be a journalist meant to observe and to report the news, not be<\/em> the news. I guess the crew at St. Louis\u2019 KSDK-TV was absent when that subject was discussed in whatever passes for journalism at some schools these days.<\/p>\n

There were probably several other ways to get this story without scaring the hell out of an entire school community. You could, for example, simply pick up the phone, call the school, and tell them what you\u2019re working on\u2014maybe even get them to agree, in advance, to a secret-shopper gambit. You could interview people\u2014kids, teachers, administrators, the school cop. But, of course, those conventional strategies would require actually interacting with people, perhaps even taking notes and checking facts\u2014things that you can\u2019t do via text messaging\u2014things that aren\u2019t nearly as fun, easy, and sensational as an ambush.<\/p>\n

The result of NewsChannel 5\u2019s poorly-thought-out sneak attack was not a news story that informed us about the various states of school security in an era of gun-crazy school shootings: The story became what the reporter did and its effect on students, staff and parents.<\/p>\n

By the way, if the reporter intended to say that Kirkwood High School\u2019s security was lacking, he got that wrong, too. His own behavior\u2014walking in unannounced, asking to speak to the school security administrator, disappearing, and then not responding to cell phone calls to confirm his status as a reporter\u2014set in motion a security response\u2014the lockdown–that \u00a0seemed completely appropriate, even if it is an unfortunate, extreme by-product of the times.<\/p>\n

Notice, too, that I have not used the name of the reporter. Although we learned his name a few days later, NewsChannel 5 did not initially identify him. So, while news outlets are usually very quick with names of alleged criminals, terrorists and victims, KSDK went all private when its own employee was at the center of the story.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a problem with enterprising reporters who get out from behind their desks to nail down a legitimate story through solid interviews, no-nonsense questions, and serious study of primary documents. \u00a0In fact, we should welcome that kind of news gathering, because it is the\u2014rare\u2014exact opposite of what we often get: newsreaders essentially, blindly repeating press releases and talking points issued by politicians, police, political parties, and entertainment sources.<\/p>\n

KSDK has\u00a0publicly apologized for\u00a0the screw-up<\/a>.\u00a0It’s\u00a0 not the first, and it won\u2019t be the last, news outlet to use poor judgment, let an overzealous reporter go too far, get sloppy, or create news where it otherwise might not have occurred. This is simply another example of the continuing degradation of news values in a corporate-driven, profits-first , news-as-entertainment environment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been said that Mt. Everest makes its own weather. We can\u2019t control that. But it\u2019s simply not okay for news outlets to\u00a0create–and be–their own news.<\/p>\n

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