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I’ve always loved delivering great stories to the public.
As a kid I considered the life of a rock star, Hollywood director,
and professional daredevil. However growing up in New England
no global celebrity was more important than our local weatherman.
When you are 8 years old nothing is as vital as school being
cancelled because of a blizzard. Great story. Therefore I watched
our local news religiously.
Perhaps that’s how it started.
Watching our local news evolved into watching World News every
night as well. So no matter how appealing the idea of touring
with U2 was (and still is), Tom Brokaw dissecting Iran Contra
was an addictive unfolding daily drama that couldn’t be
missed.
I have a fascination
with movies, Rock & Roll, and great TV (Twilight Zone anyone?)
but watching the coverage of the Berlin Wall coming down, LIve
Aid, and the Space Shuttle disaster was riveting, real, and
historic. It felt like I had to watch these events.
At that time I recognized that the lines of various media disciplines
were starting to blur. Who was this Oprah person that started
in local news, acted in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple,
then morphed into the queen of her own media empire?
How is 60 minutes always entertaining and informative?
In college I had no choice but to study television and film.
I’m a lucky guy… I got out of school and landed
on MTV.
“Here’s a studio kid, now interview Jodie Foster”.
“It’s Woodstock 2 and we’re live around the
world”.
“There is Mayor Giuliani – go ask him some questions”.
Every time I worked with MTV News my adrenalin flowed. My film
professor called me as he was watching me cover New Years Eve
from Times Square and said: “Sencio, you are a bona-fide
journalist”. He must have been guzzling champagne. Even
if my film professor was lit, and even if at that time I felt
it was absurd to describe me as a “bona-fide journalist”,
he recognized something – I loved delivering news.
I’ve found
myself in the fortunate position of participating in a wide
variety of television productions. Just when I think: “maybe
I’ll call David Letterman and ask if I can be a Luke Skywalker
to his Yoda” another news jobs enters my life and I’m
hooked. I also recognize the immediate, important impact that
telling true stories has on people’s lives – not
just the lives of the subject… but also of the viewer.
When NBC hired me to be one of the Reporter/Anchor’s of
“Home Delivery” I witnessed this phenomenon regularly.
Our media landscape
is very different then it was growing up in the 80's –
the various styles of broadcasting are rapidly weaving together.
When I started on MTV I briefly shared a dressing room with
Jon Stewart (there is a joke there somewhere). We shot at different
times of the day so I didn’t see him much - I was the
“new kid” and he was getting ready to leave the
channel and find tremendous success. Stewart was an obvious
talent, funny, quick and a nice guy… but I would have
never imagined a decade later that the president of CBS, Les
Moonves, would publicly suggest him as a possible replacement
for Dan Rather… before settling on Katie Couric. I’m
not saying this because I don’t think John Stewart couldn’t
do the job (he’d probably do a fantastic job) but there
was a time when this type of suggestion was inconceivable. The
impresario of The Daily Show on Comedy Central being considered
as the anchor of the CBS Evening News? Wow. To me, nothing illustrates
the massive transformation of broadcast journalism like this
does.
So here we are now, in a 24-hour cable news world that’s
influenced by the relentless proliferation of the Internet.
Humans crave the news… and now we get it, if we’re
in the mood or not, second by second. In a democracy, covering
the news with integrity is crucial. “Freedom of the press”
is vital in an unstable world. The fact that the news is now
seen as "entertainment" does not mean contemporary
broadcast journalism is any less important or genuine…
it simply means more people enjoy watching.
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