Friday, January 15, 2010

The Media and Respect

By Frank Absher

There was a time, long, long ago, when having a job in the media pretty much meant you had the respect of your fellow man.

I know that sounds like a fantasy now, but it’s true. Every person who grew up in that era can reel off a list of names of media practitioners and tell you why they were respected.

Mention names like Rex Davis, Bob Hardy, Max Roby, Spencer Allen…the list is a long one.

These folks were respected because they were very, very good at what they did, but there was more to it than that. You could tell that each of them had respect for people in the audience.

A personal story about Rex Davis shows what I mean.

My family was host to an exchange student from Finland, and one morning my mother caught then end of a news story about some political problem in Finland. The story had been carried on the CBS newscast at 8:00 a.m., just before Rex came on with the local news.

These were the days before Internet. We lived in a very small town with no access to a news wire.

Mom scanned the papers but found nothing. She was worried, so she dashed a note off to Rex explaining the situation and asking if he could shed any more light on the subject.

The day after the letter was mailed, Mom got a phone call from Rex. She was speechless. He had contacted the network and had all the details, which he passed on to her.

Years later when I was working with Rex at KMOX I told him the story. Of course, he didn’t recall it.

That’s because he had done things like this so many times. It was second nature for media people to serve the needs of their audiences.

No one had to tell them to go the extra mile. It was just something you did – as a consummate professional – as a human being.

I was fortunate to be in media when people still had that kind of respect for the people who filled those positions. Those media veterans passed on their high standards and their work ethic to the next generation.

Somewhere along the line that chain was broken.

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