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How Is The News Reported?
Haley Harrison • 2022-02-01
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. I'm your host, Dylan Carnahan. That was Good Love by Carlton Rashad featuring J-Soul. Carlton Rashad is a singer-songwriter from Kansas City, Missouri. Carlton won the award for best male vocalist at the 2021 Kansas City People's Awards. He recently released his debut solo music project entitled Dear Future Love. Listen to Carlton's music on your preferred platform and you can follow him on Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok at Carlton Rashad. The question for this episode is, how is the news reported? You will learn in this episode, the journalistic process of how news stories are covered, how news outlets handle fake news or false information and how the news remains objective. Our guest is an evening news anchor for KMBC 9 News. She has interviewed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, covered natural disasters like Hurricane Irene, revisited the tragedy of the Hyatt Regency walkways collapsing in Chronicle, The Skywalk Tapes. And lastly, she's the host of the KMBC 9 Storytellers Podcast. I introduce to you Haley Harrison. Good Haley, we're used to seeing you on the evening news. This conversation is different. This is the Simple Questions Podcast, and we're going to dig into your background and how the news is reported. You went to KU to study journalism and later became an anchor at Channel 6 News in Lawrence, Kansas. What made you want to become an anchor, and how did your journey start?
Haley Harrison:Oh, boy. I grew up in a household, Dylan, where the evening news was part of our day-to-day lives, and not just the evening news, the morning news too. My parents, we would get up and as we were getting ready for school, we'd be watching the news in the morning to find out what is the weather, what happened overnight. I was growing up in an era really before the Internet was mainstream and in most households. So we couldn't just log on and get our news update first thing in the morning. So we were turning to the local news every morning to get the bulk of our news. My parents took the newspaper every day as well. Then after school in the evenings, we would sit around the dinner table and in the next room, my mom and dad would have the TV going and they'd be watching the local news and the national evening news at five o'clock and at six o'clock. I mean, we would watch the news constantly all day every day. We didn't have cable in our household growing up, so it was like local TV news stations and PBS. Those were your options if you wanted to watch TV. I just was around the news all the time. I have a lot of memories as a kid of watching some of the very biggest news stories of the day and the way that my life intersected with those big news stories. Everything from 9-11 when I was in high school to the bombing of Baghdad and the Gulf War when I was a little kid. That just I think really impresses upon a person. That is an important thing and I wanted to be part of it, having watched so much of it as a little kid. When I got into high school, I think the biggest thing for me was that there was an elective class at my high school that was broadcast news production and I had a school counselor who said, Haley, you need another elective and I said, what are my options? She starts running through the list. You can do this, you can do Home Ec, you can do shop class, you can do TV production and stop there. That's what I wanted to do. I think that class changed my life and I was sold from then on.
Dylan Carnahan:You have that exposure when you're a younger child. Making the leap to actually do it, that's entirely different thing. So where did your journey take you from there?
Haley Harrison:When I was in high school and I was doing that broadcast news production class, I was really motivated and had started working at the local TV news station in the summers and doing some internships and job shadowing. When I was still in high school, I was running, I think, teleprompter and cameras and audio board for the morning news at the TV station in town and getting a lot of exposure that way. I would tell anyone who would listen to me, hey, I want to do what you do when I grow up, when I become a real human being, and what kinds of colleges would you recommend? What colleges have good programs? What should I be looking for? I was fortunate enough that the University of Kansas has a phenomenal journalism school in the William Allen White School of Journalism, and it was 30 minutes away from my home. I decided to go to KU. As soon as I got out of KU, got a job. As you mentioned, Six News and Lawrence, that took me to another job and then another job. Then about 10 years ago, I came back to Kansas City to work at Channel 9.
Dylan Carnahan:As someone who has been a consumer of news, who's obviously a participant that works in the industry, what do you think is the purpose of the news?
Haley Harrison:The news has a lot of purposes. It's a very important thing. Of course, I would say that, right?
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, some slight bias here, but objectively.
Haley Harrison:Yeah, objectively, the news serves a lot of purposes. I think first and foremost would be conveying important, life-saving information in the event of an emergency or a crisis. Think about the crisis that we've been in for the last two years, the global pandemic, conveying the most current information that we have, the most current science that we have, letting our viewers know about that so that they can make informed decisions about their health and safety and welfare every single day. That's one example. If there were a flood that hit Kansas City, people would need urgent information moment by moment. They don't even want to wait for that information to get written in, put them into a web story and put online. They want to turn on their TVs and watch what's happening right now and get the very latest information. That's one great purpose that local news serves. Think about all of our government reporting and helping to contribute to an informed electorate. That is why freedom of the press is protected in the First Amendment. That is because it is essential to a healthy democracy so that our voters, people in our communities, can make good decisions when they go to the ballot box so that they know what their government's doing so that we can hold government accountable for what they're doing. Those are just a couple of examples. And then we include weather reporting every day so that people can, at the very least, dress themselves appropriately for the weather so that they can make plans for the next few days and how the weather impacts their lives there. We do traffic reporting so people know if they're going to get to work on time or if they need to find another route. We do sports reporting so people can follow their favorite sports teams. We do so much in the course of our newscasts. And all of it is very essential.
Dylan Carnahan:In summary, you got the dissemination of critical information. You know, you have, say, a national emergency. You have that transparency, keeping, you know, government accountable. And then you got some, you know, as you mentioned, I may need a coat today. And also, what happened last night with Patrick Mahomes? Is the offense clicking? What's going on there?
Haley Harrison:That's essential information, isn't it? To know what's happening with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. No, I mean, it absolutely is. And the bottom line is that we got to give good information to people that directly affects their lives. And no one really does that better than local news does. I mean, the national news, you'll find out things that are very important. Things that are very important to our government on a large scale, important to our society and country and world on a large scale. But this sort of hyper local news is stuff that really does have a direct impact on just about everybody who watches in one way or another. And so, and again, I think nobody does that better than local broadcast news and local print news.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's an interesting point, specifically local news, because those topics aren't really being brought up nationally when proposition whatever is being voted on. How many other outlets are talking about that?
Haley Harrison:There's not a lot and not a lot of places that people can go to find out what is being debated at the local school board or find out what the local COVID case rates are. And there's a lot of information out there on the internet where people can nowadays go to find that information. But who is curating that information? Who is doing independent reporting on that to make sure that that information is accurate and deciphering what's real, what's not? Who is sort of collecting all of that and putting it into a digestible form? There is, I think, yes, people can go get their own information nowadays, but it is such a big job to find out what's right, what's truthful, and what is the best source of information. And really, we do that for our viewers. We process it and digest it for them so that they don't have to do that.
Dylan Carnahan:Now you brought up just then that you do that for your viewers. Now, in this grand purpose of the news, what is the role of a news anchor?
Haley Harrison:So, you know, I can speak about our newsroom and I've been in newsrooms that might be structured a little bit differently, but in our newsroom, the news anchors are really newsroom leaders. I don't have a managerial title by any means. I don't care to have one, but we are newsroom leaders in the sense that we are actively engaged in our editorial process and deciding what stories do we do today, how do we do them and how do we tell them, what information do we include in those stories. In the news gathering process in general, we're very actively involved in that. From the time I walk in the door, we have an editorial meeting every afternoon to sit down and look at, here's what's possible to do today as a story, what should we be doing and why should we be doing that story. We are part of those vigorous debates that we have in the newsrooms. We are also in between newscasts. A lot of people think that I go on air for half an hour, an hour at a time and read the news and then I'm done. A lot of people ask me, do you go home in between newscasts? We are very busy in between newscasts writing stories, helping collect news stories for our producers and with our producers, working really closely in tandem with them to assemble the show, to work on the order of the stories in the show, and to really serve as the final edit on a story. Because we're the last filter that story goes through before it makes it onto the air. That story will make its way through reporters and producers in our newsroom, through editors, and then at very last, it goes through the anchor. So we're very much involved in that process.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that's interesting. I want to get into the process a little bit later, but yeah, that is an excellent point. By the time it gets to you guys, we're on air. And so you kind of need to vet, filter, and yeah, and believe it or not, you do stuff before you're on TV. It's just not your 30 minutes and you're done. How disappointing is that for you?
Haley Harrison:People sometimes must watch and think, did she prepare today? No, I did. We were working very hard and sometimes things go awry. But yes, we are working very, very hard behind the scenes. And sometimes the assembly of those stories comes up to the wire. And we're all working together to put them together, to make it happen, to select just the right words and the right combinations and filtering information. What can we report? What can we not report at a certain point? What's accurate? What's not? I mean, there's so much that goes into putting together even just a 22nd story that I read that quick. I mean, it can take us half an hour or more sometimes. And really, those stories are an evolution throughout the day. We have a newscast starting at 4.30 in the morning, 4.35, 6, 7, 8, noon, 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m., 10 p.m. 11 newscasts throughout the course of our day. In addition to constantly updating our website. And so once one newscast is over, we have a next deadline just a few hours away. So we've got to try to update as many of those stories as we can, including adding in new stories that are coming in from our reporters. It is just a constant battle, and it never stops all day long. And when I walk out of the newsroom at night, the crew for the next set of shows is already in working on the morning show.
Dylan Carnahan:Now, you talk about kind of the timely matter of these stories, as far as when they're spoken about and how much you divulge. How do news outlets find out about new stories just in general?
Haley Harrison:There's a lot of ways that we find out about new stories. A lot of it is from sources, reporters working sources and having good communication with people who are in the know in our community. A lot of times stories will come to the news anchors, for example, because we are the most forward-facing people in the newsroom. There are dozens and dozens of people who are working behind the scenes to make a story happen, but most people kind of get to know who we are because they see us every night in their living rooms, and that's wonderful. So a lot of people will send me story ideas and say, hey, did you see this? Did you hear about this? Why aren't you guys reporting about this? And those are things that I can then take to our team and present as well. Our reporters have their sources that they're working. In addition to all of this, we have a newsroom email, and people will just send our newsroom emails and say, check into this, please. Of course, the Internet, a lot of stories come from the Internet. For example, last night we had a deputy who shot a man out near Blue Springs, and the sheriff posted about that shooting moments after it happened on Twitter, and in fact, that is where we learned about the shooting. Now, did we immediately report? Well, no, because we were behind the scenes making follow-up calls with dispatchers. We had a crew that we sent out to the scene. They were doing their own independent reporting and newsgathering, and so there's a lot that happens behind the scenes to get those stories off the ground once we hear that something has happened.
Dylan Carnahan:You have this element of key sources that kind of reach out that you can talk to about this. I would assume, say, government, you may have someone that has the scoop on that, and then you have kind of, you're, I almost want to say, you're public-facing. So you have people that reach out to say, hey, I've seen Haley on the news. She's on Twitter. Hey, has she thought about this? As well as just reaching out directly to the news, you're saying, their email.
Haley Harrison:Right. And through the course of the day, we may get, gosh, hundreds of story ideas submitted to us through all of those different means. And we have to decide, it's sort of this delicate balance of deciding what is urgent, what do people have to know about today, or what can we wait until tomorrow to tell people about what is newsworthy? What's possible to dedicate resources to today? What story is possible to tell? Or what story should we wait until later to tell? So, I mean, there's a lot of kind of calculus and factors that go into what ultimately does make it into our newscast based on all of those story idea submissions that we receive and filter.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, what makes a story newsworthy? I mean, you have to filter that to some regard. I know what's currently, as you mentioned, say, we're in the midst of a tornado is going on. We'll probably tend to cover about that more than say, another local legislation that day.
Haley Harrison:Right, exactly. I think urgency is really number one. Public safety and health really gets a story really high up there. If there is a tornado, that is a very urgent public health and safety issue. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, people's lives are on the line. That's a life or death situation. We don't have time to talk about the legislature when there is a tornado on the ground. You're exactly right. So yes, there will be stories that will wait until tomorrow because all of our attention is going to focus on that. That's a highly newsworthy story. Something, you know, urgency, what's happening today is a factor. What is something that can wait, you know, a story that might also be happening tomorrow? We may wait depending on what our resources and staffing are. What else is happening in the news that day? I always tell people when they bring me story ideas, I say, this may be a wonderful story idea and we would love to do it. It also depends on what else is happening today. So, you know, yesterday we were doing a lot of coverage of the passing of former Senator Bob Dole, a really legendary figure in Kansas politics for many years. That devoted a lot of our resources or that got a lot of our resources on Monday. You know, I talk about this deputy who shot someone. That is not a story that can wait until tomorrow. That is happening right now and we have to report that information right now, especially because in that situation it was a standoff. That was a life and death situation. Those kinds of things are what sort of go into our thought process. A feel-good story about, hey, the plaza lights are on now. You might want to take your family down there to go see that. That can wait until tomorrow if we've got something else that needs our attention today. So yes, all those stories may be newsworthy, but they're not equally newsworthy. And so that's part of what we think about.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that element now, kind of thinking about it, that element like public safety. I mean, if there's a current, say a standoff is happening right now, that supersedes any feel-good story for sure, but a lot of things, that immediacy and taking that into account. Now, you kind of mentioned earlier about this. After you hear of said story and you deem it newsworthy, what journalistic work do you do?
Haley Harrison:So yes, we have an afternoon, and I'm speaking about my own current shift. I go in in the afternoon and I leave late at night. So first thing, when we all get there, we have an editorial meeting where we sit down and talk about, here are the possible story ideas that we have for today, ones that are submitted, ones that the reporters have gathered and what we call enterprise stories that they've created. They've come up with the idea for the story themselves, doing their own independent reporting. And once we've decided here's what we want to pursue today, then the reporters immediately leave that room and start making phone calls, or they head out to a scene to start doing their own independent reporting. And that is a huge part of the job, is that we need them to go gather independent information, not just based off of something that we heard, hearsay, something we saw on the internet. That's not good enough for us. We need you to go and find out for yourself as our reporter what the truth is of the situation. And not only are they going to do that, they're going to go talk to people on multiple sides of an issue. They're not just going to get one side of the story. They're going to do their very best to try to talk to everybody involved in a story who will talk with us and to try to gather as much as they can from as many perspectives as they can. So the independent reporting process begins. And as often as we are able, we want to do that live, in person, on the scene of a story and not just kind of sitting in the newsroom on the computer. Of course, the pandemic has changed some things where we have to do some interviews over Zoom, like you and I are talking right now. But really, it is actively going out and pursuing that story until it is time and until it's ready to go on air.
Dylan Carnahan:And that means interviewing people, researching public information from the comfort of the news station.
Haley Harrison:So along with a photojournalist, our reporter will go out to the scene of a story, again using the example of this deputy who shot a man last night. Our reporter, as soon as we heard about this, we dispatched them out to that scene. Together they are getting video of what is happening, video of the investigation. We are also talking to law enforcement on the scene. What happened here? What transpired? We are, in some cases, maybe you would be talking to neighbors next door who witnessed what had happened. You would be potentially gathering information from public records about the homeowner where all of this happened, or the individual who was accused. Do they have a criminal record? You would be pulling from all of those sources to try to gather as much information as you could, to gather as much context as you can for any particular story. You go to all of those places, they all offer one perspective, and then together you get a complete news story that you can then report on air.
Dylan Carnahan:That has to be just incredibly intense, the kind of timely manner in which all of that has to happen, just to get all those different angles. That's a very difficult task, I would imagine.
Haley Harrison:It is, yes. Thank you for saying that, because a lot of people think that it's a very easy job, and it is a very challenging job, and there is a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure on our crews to make sure that they're getting the story right and that they are getting as much information as we possibly can to provide to our viewers. And also keep in mind that our reporters in the course of doing their work, very often, and I would say almost every single story you work on, you will know more than what is responsible to report. People, you will, oftentimes we know the whole story, but we can't responsibly report it yet because we haven't confirmed information independently or in reporting certain information, we could actually do harm. And so we have to think ethically about what we should report, not just what we can report. We don't just report information because we have it. We have to send it through a bunch of different filters and think really critically about what is my obligation here to my audience and what serves them best. So it is a very difficult job. And so often you are thinking on your feet in the moment. And it's heavily deadline driven. As I mentioned, we have those 11 newscasts throughout the course of the day. And as soon as you finish one, you got another one coming down the pipe that you got to get ready for. And there is never enough time to do the job. You can always use more time to get it done. And it is just a very demanding, very demanding job. I would also say that we love our jobs. Yeah, we're not complaining about any of that. We love what we do and feel that it is important. And so all of that is true.
Dylan Carnahan:You would have to. And from the story you said earlier, I believe you 100%. I mean, you had that exposure. You've been all in. Ever since that elective, Haley, we know. Yes. You mentioned earlier about kind of the filters. What is the process for covering a story kind of after that initial collection?
Haley Harrison:So after you go out and you collect all your facts, you sit down with your photojournalist, and there's often in a great photojournalist reporter relationship, there's a great discussion about how are we going to tell this story? And the photojournalist comes at this at the perspective of here's what I have images of. And the reporter comes at it from here's what I have the information about. And how do we marry those two things into kind of a cohesive story that the audience will find informative and compelling? And so together they sort of sit down and work on that story. The reporter is writing the story, picking out sound bites to include in the telling of this story, is the writing, putting the facts in between, sort of weaving that story together, the words of it. And then they hand that story off to the photojournalist who is then on the computer putting together what the reporter has sort of outlined in terms of facts that are spoken by the reporter and bits of the interview that are spoken by our sources on camera and then sort of doing really what is the art of putting that story together. And then they submit that off to the TV station. On our end of it, in the station, while we are working on putting together sometimes, you know, an hour long newscast, I'm working with the producers to decide what stories get into our newscast, in what order do those stories get into our newscast? That is so important. And, you know, our audience doesn't think about that because they don't need to. They don't have to. We all do. We do that work for them. But the order of the stories in a show is so important to us. And sort of the storytelling and the flow of a show. We're not going to tell you the story about Patrick Mahomes and the defense this week, right after we tell you about the deputy involved shooting that happened. You know, we create a flow through our show and getting in there and writing those stories. As I said, you know, a 20 second story can sometimes take half an hour to write. Maybe it takes five minutes to write depending on what it is. And so we are working on that on our end all the way up to news time. And sometimes even while we're still in the newscast, we are tweaking and finessing those stories or adding in new stories as they happen. So it is constant frenzy and work on all ends of it. Every moment that we're not on air.
Dylan Carnahan:You bring up the flow and the order. That's something I know personally haven't taken into account. That juxtaposition, like as you brought up, say, a shooting and news or a sports update, as well as you're also simultaneously receiving updates on other stories and now are able to divulge information you previously had on other stories. I mean, that seems like it's all happening within, you know, in real time.
Haley Harrison:Yeah, it's kind of this jigsaw puzzle that our producers create throughout the day. And we're finding pieces and we're adding them in or removing other pieces depending on what has just changed. And I mean, it really is very complex. And the reasons for why we do certain things are very complex. There's no easy answers about nothing is black and white, right? Everything is very subjective. And we have to take so many factors into consideration for every choice that we make in the course of a newscast. Sometimes, you know, we'll be telling some stories and maybe one of our reporters went went long on the time that they were given to tell a story. And now we have to get rid of some other stories. And so how do we make a decision about what stories can we, as we call, kill? What stories can we kill out of a show and why and where in the show? And I mean, there's there's endless factors that we have to take into consideration. We have to hit our commercial breaks at certain times. And so how does that affect that? You know, there's a lot that our audience doesn't know and they don't need to know because we just want them to be able to sit back and and take in the information that they need and not think about any of that. Right. Of how the sausage is made, so to speak.
Dylan Carnahan:You bring up all these factors and a lot of which, you know, you normally don't think of when you're when you're watching the evening news. One factor that has been a topic of conversation, if you will, has been fake news or false information. You bring up earlier social media is rot with misinformation as well as just in general. So what kind of how do you handle fake news or false information in your industry when you're getting all these, you know, story tips, when you're talking to all these people with subjective paradigms? How do you handle that?
Haley Harrison:So you won't find so-called fake news or misinformation in our newscasts, and that is because although there is a lot of it out there, we do independent reporting on those stories that are submitted to us. We don't just take something at face value and run it on air. We're making our own phone calls. We're going out and doing our own interviews. We're asking our own questions about whether something is truthful or not. And I think the prevalence of misinformation in our world right now makes local news all that more important because we are a place where we are filtering that information out, you know. And in fact, it is disturbing how often we are now doing stories to dispel misinformation that is out there on the Internet. That's taking up more of our time than ever before. There are stories that rise to a level where we have to actually go out there and say, hey, you may have seen this online. It is not true. People taking baths in Borax to sort of unvaccinate themselves or whatever, that is very dangerous. And so now we got to go out there and tell people, hey, that's not true. Don't do that. It's very dangerous, you know. And so the only time you would see any of that is in us telling you this is misinformation. And you need to do that for your own safety or something like that. But there are so many fail safes built into our news gathering system that you won't see that. Misinformation working its way into our newscasts. And misinformation is not new for journalists. We have been since the beginning of the news industry, since the beginning of this country, have been dealing with misinformation. All of our sources come to us with their own agenda. And it has always been our job to figure out what is their agenda, why are they telling me the information that they're telling me, and could they be trying to mislead me about the veracity of a story, about what's really happening in this situation, why am I getting the information that I'm getting? That sort of healthy skepticism is built into our DNA. And so we are always looking at something with skepticism and questioning whether it's true or not, and trying to get other perspectives on that same story so we can find out if what we're being told is real or not.
Dylan Carnahan:You, the news bites in nature and design, you're inherently taking in information, seeking out more, validating that. And so that's just something inherent, and you bring up how misinformation isn't new. If I'm not mistaken, a long time ago, Manifest Destiny, there were people saying that on the West Coast, there were pumpkins the size of houses. You know, misinformation is nothing new. Yeah, it's an interesting take, just that inherent vetting information, and you bring up that you spend quite a bit of time disproving things as well.
Haley Harrison:Well, and I won't tell you what the story is, but within the last couple of weeks, we had misinformation coming to us from what should have been very valid sources. People in our community who are trusted and valued and authoritative, we're feeding us bad information. So in the course of our news gathering, we're hearing one side of this story, but we go out and we get a perspective from another side of the story and are hearing something totally different. So in our newsroom, there were vigorous debates about what do we report here? What are the facts? Because people try to muddy the facts for us all the time. And it is our job to decipher what is real and what's not. And in the course of what we learned, it's another situation where we learned a lot, but we could only report responsibly and ethically, a lot less than what we knew. And so I think sometimes our viewers might get frustrated that we're not reporting more. We can't provide more details. We might know, but it's not responsible or ethical for us to tell you everything that we know. And please trust us that we are doing our job as ethically as we possibly can. So misinformation doesn't always come from shady sources on the internet from fake Twitter accounts or whatever. It comes from some very respectable, authoritative places too.
Dylan Carnahan:And you can see the rationale behind that. You may want to perpetuate a certain narrative because you have reach, you're the news. We want people to hear things displayed in a certain fashion.
Haley Harrison:Exactly, exactly. There are, in this particular case, there was a faction who wanted a story to be floated because it might make somebody look bad. And so we had to get to the bottom of that and we did. We did. And it was a story that multiple news stations and media sources throughout town all reported in different ways. And I know that we got to the bottom of that. I feel very confident about what ended up on the air.
Dylan Carnahan:Now, given the polarization of politics and just the prevalence of politics, how do you objectively deliver the news? Cause it's inherently gonna come across political terrain.
Haley Harrison:It will, it will. I'm so glad you brought it up too, because I think it's one of the things that we live in such a polarized world, that people actually have a hard time believing that their local news anchor could live in a more neutral space, right? I think people are so, everything is so political, right? So everything, you know, public health and safety has become a political issue in the last couple of years. And it is, I think, especially these days, hard for people to believe that anyone could live in a neutral place. That's what we do as journalists. It is, again, in our DNA to operate and to think like that. From the moment I step foot onto the property at work, my personal opinions as Haley Harrison, mom, all of that, whoever I am, the things that make up and inform who I am as a person, I leave as much of that at the door as I can. And I step into that door thinking about my audience. And that's the most important thing that we do. I know that my audience is made up of people all across the political spectrum. And so I don't tell them how to think or feel about a story, but I do give them the facts of the story. And unfortunately today we live in a climate where people merely by hearing the facts of a story, think that you have a political agenda by sharing certain information. And that's very, I think, disruptive and very dangerous for our democracy and the world that we live in. And I just keep going in and doing the job every day because ultimately I believe that the facts are all we have, right? We can't live in these two separate worlds. So we kind of keep our heads down and do the job day after day because we know it's right. On a personal level, I would say that sort of the way I was raised helps me do my job. My parents had political opinions and perspectives, but the way I was raised in my household, when I had a question about why does government do this or why does government do that, I wasn't given an opinionated answer by my parents. They told me the facts of a matter and let me go through my own critical thinking process to decide how I felt about that or develop my own opinions about it. And so that was a great gift for me just as a person because it also helps me as a journalist now. I can use those skills and think, okay, what are the facts? And then opinions, I'll leave that up to somebody else, but it's very easy for me. And I know that a lot of people have a hard time understanding how somebody could think and be so apolitical, but it is very easy. And I would say among all of my colleagues, I don't know how any of them vote. And that's great. Actually really great. It's a great work environment because we don't sit around and talk about politics. We don't sit around and talk about our personal opinions about anything. There are people who I think, I wonder how they vote, but I have no idea. I really don't. And it's just not something that comes up. It's great to work in an apolitical environment.
Dylan Carnahan:From what I'm hearing, it sounds like staying true to the purpose of delivering information to people helps you remain unbiased.
Haley Harrison:It does because it's not about me. It's not about what Haley thinks or what Haley feels about anything. You got to keep your eyes on why are there in your total purpose. You're right. It's about the audience. What do they need to know? What do they deserve to know? And I have a responsibility and that is a huge weight, that responsibility to my audience. And I also, I do that job knowing that some people may not like the information that I'm going to tell them about. We deliver some very difficult stories, whether it is a child last week who died in this city, to some very difficult things that are happening in our country and our government. And I know that my viewers might listen to the words I tell them and get angry or feel angry. And maybe they'll direct some of that anger toward me, but I do it because they deserve to know. And in a world where there is opinion news left and right, and I say opinion news, opinion news is not a thing. Opinion editorial programs are entertainment and not news. But when there are programs like Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson and all of those, and they are presenting themselves as news, it gets very confusing for our audiences to know what's true and what's opinion, what's fact and what's opinion. And all of that can get muddied very easily. And so I want them to know, I am a place where you can tune in and we are gonna do our best every single moment of every day to try to get you factual information that has been vetted and that is accurate, and it's gonna affect your lives. And so I think local news has never been more important.
Dylan Carnahan:You bring up an interesting phenomenon, which is just by shedding light or discussing something that may be a dissenting opinion, you can be ostracized and viewed negatively, even though it's say objectively true.
Haley Harrison:Yeah, that is an interesting phenomenon and very dangerous that I think we live in a world where information that you don't like would be perceived as inaccurate, just because you don't like to hear it. I mean, that is in our lives the last two years with the pandemic. I don't wanna go on air every day and tell people, hey, there's still a pandemic and there's people dying every day in our community and you gotta keep wearing a mask. The government just decided we gotta still wear masks people. So, I don't wanna be the bearer of any of that news, right? But I have an obligation to my audience. And so I understand that people get angry about some of that news that we have to share, but it's part of the job, part of the job.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, and that has to be extremely difficult, which kind of gets me to my next question, which is what are some of the greatest challenges anchors face when reporting?
Haley Harrison:It's the time thing, hands down, it's time. There is never enough time. I could have 24 hours to put together a half hour newscast, and there still wouldn't be enough time because there would always be more, every story brings up more questions. You can never get a totally complete story, even if you had all the time in the world. I never have enough time to prepare for my newscasts, right? I read through as many of those scripts as I can. I usually get through them all, but I don't have time to, often, I always want more time with a script to sit, to help fact check things for my producers, to help maybe rewrite something so it's more conversational for me, so I can deliver it better for the audience, to go through all the graphics and the video that we produce for a particular story, to make sure I know my camera is okay, all of this. And then, the reporter's just putting the stories together. They could always use more time, I guarantee you. Their photojournalist could use more time to edit the story, make it a little bit more special. We are constantly fighting that clock. And in a really deadline driven place, like a local newsroom, you're always fighting time.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, no, that's certainly been evident in kind of the course of our discussion here today. Now, how can people find out more about you and the work you're doing at KMBC?
Haley Harrison:I love it when viewers reach out with questions about our newscasts or about stories that we do. I love it when they ask, why did you do this story this way? Or why did you do this story at all? Or I had a gentleman reach out and say, why aren't you doing this story that I'm seeing in the national news? Why aren't you reporting on this? I am always happy to have those kinds of conversations with our audience. I don't care to have a conversation with our audience about my haircut or why I was having a bad hair day yesterday, but I will always engage someone who comes to me in good faith to ask about our newscast and why we do things the way we do. So I love hearing those kinds of questions and emails actually makes my day. Cause I feel like people are paying attention and they care and they want to know more and they want to educate themselves. And I think that's awesome. So I'm on Instagram and Twitter, Facebook, probably the easiest ways people can reach me. I, you know, on Twitter and Instagram, I'm at Haley KMBC. And then on Facebook, I'm Haley Harrison KMBC. Those are my official station pages where people can find me and reach out, submit their story ideas if they want. Those are probably the best ways that people can do that. And maybe even learn a little bit about me in the process if they want to.
Dylan Carnahan:And you can find that in the show notes for this episode as well. And I'm sure we'll get a couple of shout outs on the Simple Questions social media as well. Well, thank you for coming on, Haley. We had a great conversation. Have a great rest of your day. And I look forward to seeing you on the news this evening.
Haley Harrison:Thank you so much.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Haley Harrison. We talked about the importance of localized news, how valuable the news is for disseminating information, and giving a peek behind what news journalists and anchors do. Go ahead and tune in to KMBC 9 from five to seven on weekdays to see Haley Harrison. Go ahead and tune in to KMBC 9 from five to seven on weekdays to see Haley Harrison. Listen to the KMBC 9 Storytellers Podcast on your preferred platform, and follow Haley on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Do not forget to listen to Carlton's music and follow him on social media as well. And lastly, subscribe to Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. For the next episode, we're currently looking into two subjects. One has to do with psychology, and the other has to do with money. You'll find out more as we get closer to March 1st. And I look forward to sharing that episode with you then. Thank you for listening and remember to keep asking questions.
Haley Harrison:I can't wait.