PBS Ombudsman Knocks Network For Skipping Tucson Shooting Story Until Monday Night

How big does a story have to be for PBS to cover it on a weekend? Apparently bigger than the shooting spree in Tucson that killed six and left a member of Congress critically wounded. As PBS’s ombudsman, Michael Getler writes, ” if you are a devoted follower of the news and of PBS, when horrific stories such as the one that unfolded in Tucson last Saturday, Jan. 8, you must go to the big three broadcast networks or cable for coverage. The PBS NewsHour will get around to it on Monday evening.”

As Getler notes, news does break out on weekends from time to time, and when it does, “PBS is nowhere to be found.” Getler says while the no-news-on-weekends approach is nothing new, it continues to irritate loyal PBS news viewers, who write in every time they want information, but have to go elsewhere to get it:

There are no doubt impressive-sounding reasons, financial or otherwise, why there is no PBS NewsHour, or something similar, on Saturday and Sunday evenings. But it has always seemed to me like an abdication of duty that also has the side effect of sending regular PBS viewers to other networks. The weekday evening NewsHour is one of PBS’s flagship programs and Jim Lehrer is among journalism’s most respected figures. So it just seems inconsistent with a commitment to news and public affairs, and to promoting the NewsHour and Lehrer as something special and unique — as PBS officials do publicly to emphasize the importance of public broadcasting — that some new formula can’t, or won’t, be found to serve the public on Saturday and Sunday as well.

It’s not just PBS, of course. MSNBC has been criticized for years over its dedication to taped programming on weekends, though the network did cut in to cover the Arizona shooting. MSNBC didn’t stay on the story for the duration, returning to taped shows, and viewers flocked to Fox and CNN, both of whom went with the story wall-to-wall. That audience pattern held into the week, when MSNBC’s coverage of the Tucson memorial placed third in ratings, after first-placed Fox News and second-placed CNN.