Throughout the programming day of February 21st, Fox News Channel ran a promo promising an “exclusive” interview with Linda Tripp on its talk show “Hannity and Colmes”.
Fox made that claim despite the fact that Tripp had been interviewed by Charles Gibson the day before on ABC’s “Good Morning America”.
It was also a month after ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20 had promoted its own interview with Tripp with correspondent Nancy Collins as an “Exclusive”. Exclusive -- even though Collins also interviewed Tripp for the December issue of George magazine, which of course prominently slapped “Exclusive” on its cover.
In journalism, the word exclusive isn’t all that exclusive any more.
That is the subject of the latest installment in our Word Watch series. On The Media’s John Solomon reports:
SFX: “Dateline-Court TV Exclusive” – “ABC Gloria Steinem Exclusive Interview”
Exclusive used to mean having a story that no one else had. A scoop. Breaking news. An interview all to yourself. But the media has expanded the definition.
Take the cover of Newsweek’s February 26th edition. It featured the headline: “Sleepless Nights and Secret Pardons: The Inside Story of Bill’s Last Days.” In block letters slugged at the top of the page was “Exclusive.”
The article itself turned out to be an interesting behind-the-scenes narrative of the final moments of the Clinton Administration. But it was not an exclusive in the sense that a reader could find the gist of the story only in Newsweek. Yes, there were a few details one could only read in the magazine, but generally it was an Inside Story that readers could find inside other publications.
Newsweek senior editor Deidre Depke acknowledges the expansion of the term’s meaning.
“I think there has been an evolution of how news organizations view the word. When it first came into use, it meant scoop or something that a news organization had completely exclusively. These days I think it still retains that meaning, but it is also used about a story that is unique. A definitive story might also be exclusive.”
Depke says that the Clinton Inside Story fit the latter criterion.
“The fact that Clinton at the end of his time in office was up all night was not exclusive idea. People pretty much knew that. But story did have narrative that I think was exclusive. It did contain information that had not been reported before. It was written or presented in a way no one else had tried to do and was quite definitive.”
But there has also been a broadening in the more traditional meaning of an “exclusive” as well at Newsweek and other mainstream media.
On December 29, 2000, Newsweek featured an “Exclusive” interview with Ariel Sharon. Then, on January 17, 2000, during the last two weeks of the Israeli election campaign, Newsweek highlighted another Sharon q-and-a as “Exclusive”. And in the March 19th issue, it also called a Lally Weymouth interview with the new Prime Minister “Exclusive”.
It is true that Sharon rarely does interviews with the Israeli press let alone with American media. But can you really have three exclusive interviews of the same person in three months?
Depke offers a qualified ‘yes’.
“I suppose in looking at that particular series of interviews there were a lot of exclusives in a very short period of time, however we would have see into future to know a) the news was going to stay hot and b) we going to keep talking to Sharon. So that wasn’t possible. For the reader, the point is that you are delivering a very important interview with a critical person. They don’t really care that you’re calling it an exclusive for third time. They know it is significant.”
But “Exclusive” has now come to mean that at this moment in time no one else is interviewing the person. By that criterion, at 9:30pm on Thursday February 22nd, Fox had an “Exclusive” interview with Linda Tripp even if she had spoken to ABC the day before.
Typical of the sliding standard was Larry King’s intro to his March 26th show with new Texas Tech University Basketball Coach Bobby Knight.
SFX: “Larry King – Bobby Knight Intro”
King billed the interview “Exclusive” though it came only two days after Knight held an press conference covered by most media organizations in the western world.
Using that same criterion, news organizations could promote practically every one-on-one interview as exclusive. With the only non-exclusives being Presidential news conferences and the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase.
The problem is more a marketing issue than an editorial one. The term is most often used in headlines or on- air promos as news organizations attempt to differentiate their products in an increasingly competitive media marketplace.
As a result, the mainstream press has resorted to mimicking a sales technique popularized by supermarket tabloids. (Ironically, the tabloids normally use “Exclusive” correctly. They are the only ones with the story; the problem is sometimes that the story isn’t true.)
Does the breathless use of ‘Exclusive’ erode the media’s credibility with the consumer? Is there a crying wolf phenomenon that dilutes what is in fact special and puts more emphasis on the sizzle in journalism than the steak?
Yes, contends Scottie Williston, a former CBS News Deputy Foreign Editor, who is now a Visiting Professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
“I think what happens is you’ll get your viewer and as soon as he realizes or she realizes ‘I’ve seen this’ they flick off. So they may have great numbers at the start of something but they don’t sustain it. And people don’t pay any attention to it. It’s how many people really pay attention to that exclusive on a tabloid in a supermarket…I think there is a definite cost to news coverage.”
Depke says that her magazine is cognizant of that potential cost.
“There is sensitivity here at Newsweek to overuse of the word exclusive and we do spend time in meetings discussing especially on cover lines what the flag words are going to be. Whether it is exclusive -- or inside is a word we also like – we want to make sure that they are accurate. It is an issue of credibility. You have to deliver to the reader what you’re promising.”
In that spirit, On The Media wants to be clear that this report is not an exclusive media analysis of the term “exclusive”. By coincidence, Brill’s Content’s March issue included a story about how Vanity Fair magazine’s “Exclusive” photos from Sierra Leone had already been broadcast on television and the Internet.
So, with an “Electronic Media Exclusive” on the word Exclusive, this is John Solomon for On The Media.
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