Believe it or not, it all started with a complaint by e-mail! I had watched one of the local TV news programs nightly for years, and noticed that international news hardly ever received any attention.

Night after night I was subjected to the torture (at least that’s what it seemed if I wasn’t really interested) of three separate weather reports within a half hour! Finally one evening when I must have been a bit more cranky than usual, I sat down to send (fire off?) a complaint about the dearth of international news.

The news director of the station responded the next day … and over the course of time a friendship began to develop. I learned a great deal about the challenges of that profession and the unique problems faced by people in his type of work.

That initial exchange comes to mind because the fellow came to town over the weekend and we went out for breakfast after the radio Mass at the cathedral last Sunday. He has since moved on to a position with more professional responsibility in another city, so it was a good opportunity to compare notes again and to see how the television news “industry/profession” had developed.

My first great insight into the field was the realization that a person responsible for producing a news program is regularly called into the boss’s office each morning to receive the audience ratings for the night before. Apparently each metropolitan area has the capacity to monitor the presumed number of local viewers per station each day and to determine almost immediately which programs are watched.

I’m not sure how it works, but it provides almost instantaneous feedback on viewing audience preferences. Imagine being confronted by that type of accountability every day. It’s almost like the last judgment every morning. Advertising rates depend on viewer numbers and ratings. The pressure is constant.

More and more Americans obtain their news these days less from the morning paper or evening TV programs than from instantaneous reports on the Internet. So what happens to the evening news programming? That is another pressure.

As a result, there is a constant challenge to balance human interest with entertainment as well as news coverage. Morally, the person in charge of reporting local news is called upon to avoid exploiting the raw wounds and grief of human tragedy while still providing fundamental news and human interest … but the pressure is there to do just that. We’ve all cringed at the sight of a microphone thrust into the face of a heart-stricken parent over the loss of a loved one through accident or violence. Still more pressure in the wrong direction.

There’s always the temptation to sensationalize the news or to linger on the edge of sexual issues for the sake of increasing the number of viewers. Someone calls the shots, selects the items to be covered and determines how those matters will be reported.

News programs can easily become “Springerized” and professional TV journalists forced into roles not always of their choosing. How does one measure the morality of such practices? What is truly in the interest of the common good?

As I have often recalled, there were three general aims of the Second Vatican Council, namely the renewal of the church, the reconciliation and reunion of the churches and the transformation of the modern world by the Gospel.

Television, and particularly the news programming, can aid that final goal in extraordinary ways without being religious. How to make the world a better place by everything we do is the basic challenge. News reporting which separates the actual information from the editorial is helpful, but an editorial comment could also be beneficial.

The world is shrinking and we need to know more about life on the rest of the globe. Other nations seem to have more thoughtful coverage than ourselves. Every bit of violence, injustice or social corruption spills over into our living rooms immediately; that’s a very mixed blessing.

People from Africa complain that the only items from their countries which reach our screens are famines, AIDS and military rebellions, but never anything positive. Thoughtful and interested adults need to know all the basic information, and with enough details to make judgments about the world.

I remember that I was in the Dominican Republic visiting our mission there five years ago when the World Trade disaster occurred. Consequently I viewed the Italian, Dominican and French reports of that disaster without seeing our own. They were thoughtful and very informed … so very different from our American programming which apparently only repeated the terrible images endlessly for hours and seared our imagination.

I am so grateful that a young news director took time to respond to my e-mail. I’ve probably done more changing personally as a result of the new understanding than the programs, but I have learned a lot. I’m also grateful for the professionals in that field who struggle to embody the sometimes subtle ethics of a very competitive world.

It was good to have breakfast with him again!