Broadcast media are AWOL
MEDIA WATCH
Greg Pearson

The perception is that local media are watching out for the citizens when local government meets, monitoring what elected and appointed officials do and say. That might be true in other counties, but it's not true in Chesterfield. And our county has more population than any other locality in central Virginia so you'd expect more attention on Chesterfield.

It's hard to report on Chesterfield County if you don't have a reporter at meetings of the Board of Supervisors, School Board and Planning Commission meetings. You can't understand Chesterfield issues and the county process if you are AWOL: Absent WithOut Learning.

There are dozens of radio stations in the Richmond metro, but none of them attend these meetings. Period. Perhaps five percent of the time one reporter from one of the television stations is present. Maybe. In fact, some citizens have been asked to call TV reporters to tell them what goes on at these meetings since the citizens, and not the reporters, are present.

Staff members of four different TV stations have acknowledged to us that they keep files of our news reports so their reporters know the issues. (No, we don't keep files on their stories.) Thanks for the compliment TV stations, but knowledgeable reporters know the issues firsthand and don't use other media reports as background material.

Some time ago, we began delaying our latest online issue by two days because WWBT (Channel 12) kept using us as a news source - Ed Barber sues the county for medical coverage; Cosby High School builder is sued by neighbors; and keeping chickens in the yard of a River Ridge home to name a few. If the number one TV news station does it, what can be expected of the other stations?

Imagine, TV stations, with all their resources and staff, taking stories from a weekly newspaper? That's just one reason we believe that TV and other daily media here have been under-serving the Richmond market for some time.

A story told to us by one former county official illustrates that point. About 15 years ago, he went outside the meeting room during a break and found a WWBT reporter in tears because she was supposed to do a live report about the planning commission meeting but didn't understand what was going on. He sat down with her and helped her write the story, and she was able to do the live report as scheduled. She has since gone on to network television, and you can occasionally see Campbell Brown sitting in to anchor "The Nightly News."

Reporting the news in Chesterfield isn't hard unless you're AWOL. Yes, the meetings are often long and sometimes tedious, but no one ever said reporting the news was easy. Attending those meetings leads to understanding and better reporting of Chesterfield news.