April 29, 2005

Dictator Update: WKRN's Bundgaard Responds

WKRN Capitol Hill reporter Chris Bundgaard has submitted a comment to my earlier post regarding WKRN's story and the factual error in it. I thought you should read that comment, so I'm posting it here:

My bad, Bill. You are correct about the voice vote issue on Wednesday, but the error did not changes the thrust of the story---Gill's comments, Naifeh's response and the fallout afterwards. Unfortunately, I was not in the House Wednesday and had to rely on what I thought were reliable versions. We've also problems here at CH 2 in downloading the House streaming video. Three attempts to view it Thursday revealed a problem on our end. With regrets, I did not get to look at it and my deadline loomed, so I had to go with what I thought was a reliable version. We'll be watching what happens in the subcommittee next week.

Thanks for keeping me on my toes,

Chris Bundgaard

As I said before, Chris Bundgaard is one of the best Capitol Hill reporters. All reporters make mistakes - his willingness to review his story in light of the criticism is to be praised. It's that kind of honesty that makes for a good journalist.

You may have noticed that there's a WKRN scrolling-headlines ad near the top of my blog. They bought that space. But they don't own BillHobbs.com. Based on my own discussions about journalism and the blogopshere with WKRN's general manager, Mike Sechrist, I'm confident that WKRN is comfortable with being a part of the give-and-take of the blogosphere, even when it includes criticism of WKRN stories, such as my post yesterday, or praise such as this post. It isn't just a marketing slogan - WKRN really is trying to listen to what Nashville is talking about.

WKRN is clearly plugged in to the Nashville blogosphere, and having its reporters pay attention to what the blogosphere is saying about its stories can only benefit both the newscast and the audience.

P.S. It's worth noting that Nashville's three other teevee news operations, WSMV, NewsChannel 5 and Fox17 News, are not blog-savvy and plugged into the local blogosphere the way WKRN is - and none of those stations reported on this story.