Newsman defends on-air Strake comments
But Terry Wood, a lead evening news anchor for KTVX Ch. 4 News, said Friday that he stands by what he said and does not regret voicing his opinion during the newscast.
Wood traveled to Las Vegas on Tuesday to speak to a spokesman of the Department of Energy and deliver petitions opposing the test. The television station, owned by Clear Channel, had taken an editorial stance opposing the test, in which the Defense Threat Reduction Agency would detonate 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil at the Nevada Test Site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
While in Nevada, Wood delivered several hundred petitions that the station had collected on its Web site. Camera crews filmed the delivery for a segment that appeared later Tuesday on the station's 10 p.m. newscast. During the segment, a Department of Energy spokesman, Darwin Morgan, refused to speak to Wood, calling the television anchorman's actions "advocacy journalism."
Immediately following the segment, Wood added a personal editorial commentary opposing the proposed test. He acknowledged that the energy department spokesman was correct that he and the news program were engaging in "advocacy journalism," although "objectivity is the goal of a good, professional journalist." But he pointed out that he and his children and grandchildren live in Utah, as do those of the news program's other staff members.
"As journalists," Wood said Friday, "we're encouraged to live by our code of ethics, and I checked it, but sometimes there's an issue we have to take a stand on, and this was it," adding that his segment was labeled as a "commentary." The words "commentary" appeared briefly at the beginning of his opinion piece.
However, Allison Barlow Hess, vice president of the Utah chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, said Wood's actions have compromised his credibility as a journalist.
"It probably weakens his journalistic position, and surely he cannot cover this story any more," she said. "It compromises any coverage he could do of the story, and perhaps even that of the station."
Hess, a Weber State University journalism professor who was a reporter for KSL-TV for 12 years, said that editorials have an important place in the news but that they should be kept separate from actual news stories and be delivered by someone other than journalists who provide the daily news.
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