Media on media

By adamg on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 8:02pm

Last fall, Globe reporter Johnny Diaz profiled Channel 7's new general manager, Randi Goldklank. Now he discusses his discomfort with the way the media is ripping into one of its own:

... My discomfort with the coverage stems from having known Randi in the last year through my TV articles, which led me to write one on her. The person described in the police report doesn't mirror the enthusiastic and sprightly woman I have dealt with for a year. What is not being presented in this week's coverage is that she lives and breathes the news business. It pulses in her blood. She's aggressive but only because she likes to win and she brings an infectious energy (even when I spent time with her at her gym at 5 a.m. for my profile last Sept.) She brings that outlook to work each day to motivate her staff. I wish I had seen more of that in the coverage but all we had to go by was detailed in the police reports and my previous profile on her - something the other media didn't have. ...

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She "lives and breathes the news business", but...

By Harry on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 10:35pm.

The police report quotes Goldklank as threatening to use her position in the media against the police officers through inaccurate reporting and public ridicule.

How is that behavior consistent with living and breathing the news business? If it is consistent in any way with professional journalism, then Joseph Goebbels should be an honored professional journalist.

It's cuz

By Gareth on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 7:52am.

She had something besides the news "pulsing in her blood" at the time. Say, about "three dozen drinks."

I disagree somewhat with Johny Lovelorn's assessment of why this is front page news. It's not just because Goldklank is a big shot - she's not that big a big shot (I'd never heard fo her). It's also because she threatened the cops with bad publicity. So it's only natural they would respond with a preemptive strike, before she got a chance to carry out her threat.

That excuse is not sufficient

By Harry on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:16am.

One can blame alcohol for these remarks, but I don’t think alcohol comes close to excusing them. I doubt the media arrogance they expose disappears entirely when Boston Channel 7’s Bigshot GM returns to sobriety.

My idea of fairness

By Gareth on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:50am.

Is believing that she's a perfectly nice person when she hasn't had "three dozen drinks." I've never had three dozen drinks, so I might act like an ass too if I were that drunk - though I'd be considerably less sprightly...

Perhaps Ms. Goldklank learned something about herself from her pharmaceutical experiments. For example, that it's irresponsible and self-defeating to drink that much... and that she's not really such a big shot after all.

I expect to read that she's at Betty Ford any day now. A little Celebrity Rehab, and all is forgiven.

Have you been reading the Herald?

By adamg on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:57am.

Jessica Heslam (the one who got the "groper" angle from Goldklank herself) interviews PR people who basically say she needs to get into rehab immediately, because that will make people go "aw" and forgive her.

Then we have Margery Eagan, who often makes me glad I don't read the Herald more often, concluding she's guilty and wondering why a drunken Bill Weld is heroic while a drunken woman is merely pathetic and sad (maybe it's because Weld only jumped into rivers and never threatened a state trooper, Marg?).

No

By Gareth on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 9:19am.

But my wife works in PR.
(Not that she's a big shot or anything...)

I know enough about it to know that this ain't gonna fly:

During an interview with me Monday night, Goldklank ... looked me in the eye and said she hadn’t been drinking before or during the flight.

She's kind of caught between a rock and a hard place here. People would forgive her for acting like an ass while drunk if she hung her head in shame and did a Celebrity Rehab tour. But that seems to conflict with her legal strategy to get out of the very serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which is deny deny deny.

It's the ARROGANCE, Gareth...

By Harry on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 9:19am.

...and the complete willingness to misuse whatever media power was at her disposal in order to save her own skin at the expense of others. It reminds me of Dan Rather and 60 Minutes in microcosm. Podhoretz wrote about this phenomenon this month:

For these people do not think of themselves as “content providers.” They think much more highly of themselves than that. They believe they play a vital role, perhaps the most vital role, in the defense of the freedoms of every citizen.…The immodesty of this idea led many newspaper professionals of the late 20th century into a category error. They came to confuse the significance of the subjects they were covering with the act of covering them. Proximity to the news made them a species of news. They wrote about government; therefore, they were equivalent to the government in importance. They reported a war, and their act of reporting a war came to loom as large as the war itself.

Arrogance

By Gareth on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 9:46am.

I'm arrogant too. I think some people forgive me for that. I'd probably forgive somebody too if they were contrite after over-reaching. I tend to think it's funny rather than horrifying when somebody acts like an ass. I believe that blaming it on an alcohol problem and promising scout's honor never to drink again would probably be sufficient for most people - heck, she could do a special report on "Alcohol Intolerance - The Unseen Epidemic" or some such twaddle. The real problem here is that she went beyond arrogance and into threats.

Goldklank boxed herself in. If, after being belligerent and abusive with the cops, she had calmed herself down and tried to make nice (not that nice, if you know what I mean) she might have been able to get some kind of back-room deal to drop the charges (not that back room...). But her threat to use the media to slander the police forced their hand, and a natural response on their part was to get their side into the media first and press all possible charges to boot. I don't think there are any takebacksies on this assault charge.

Your quote is excellent and very apropos. It's reasonable to imagine that Ms. Goldklank is truly a bit confused about her importance. I'd imagine that part of any recovery she might be able to make would include a heaping slice of humble pie. The problem is that she doesn't have to impress the public but the judge. A&B on a police officer isn't a light thing.

IANAL, but it looks like Section 13D to me:

Section 13D. Whoever commits an assault and battery upon any public employee when such person is engaged in the performance of his duties at the time of such assault and battery, shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than ninety days nor more than two and one-half years in a house of correction or by a fine of not less than five hundred nor more than five thousand dollars.

If that's the case, then Ms. Goldklank stands a serious chance of spending a few months in jail. I don't think any amount of PR would make that better.

It's about time the media

By anon on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 10:39pm.

It's about time the media turned on its own.
Crybaby!

Dont' they always close

By Mark on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 12:16am.

Dont' they always close ranks and protect their own. There but for the grace of God... Now Emily Rooney and the four dwarves will be telling us how wonderful she is.

Johnny Diaz and his crush on Randy Goldklank

By Ned Devine on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:35am.

hey Johnny...WTF does her getting to the gym early and
wanting to win the rating sweeps have to do with her acting like a complete moron on an airplane?

Way to stay focused and unbiased brother.

How's this for "enthusiastic and sprightly"???

By merlinmurph on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:30am.

Her tirade on the police:
"I'm a big shot in Boston and I'll have your [expletive] jobs," Goldklank told the troopers, according to the report. "You think you're a [expletive] tough guy, just you watch and see what the [expletive] happens to you when I get out of here."

Credibility in the news is the number one goal, and her credibility is sh*t.

Leave the justice to the courts?

By adamg on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:35am.

I'm enjoying the coverage as much as anyone (I'm finding it even more fascinating than the spotlight on that alleged serial drunk driver who almost took America's Sweetheart away from us on Cape Ann), but one thing I have learned in my pitiful media career (yeah, I carry a press pass, well, OK, these days, an ID badge that opens the doors at work) is that there usually are two sides to every story.

credibility

By steve weeb on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 12:47pm.

you folks have it all wrong.
you keep talking about "credibility".
general managers almost all come from a sales background (including the one everyone's been discussing recently).
they do not have (or are not supposed to have) any input into how the news department is run. that's the news director's job.
last time i checked, salespeople have about as much credibility as lawyers and p.r. folks (no offense to any of them, but it's their job to stretch and twist the truth. and it's true some take it a little further with straight-out lies.)
this isn't to discount the lack of "cred" whdh has, but let's not confuse salespeople with "journalists".
at least journalists TRY to get the facts right (well, to some extent).

Not according to the Globe's story

By Harry on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 4:05pm.

Sorry, but I think you are the one who has it all wrong here, Steve. According to the Globe's profile of Goldklank published last September, she dispatched WHDH news teams at her own discretion:

"We will go to where the story is," says Randi Goldklank, the new general manager and vice president at WHDH and sister station WLVI-TV (Channel 56). "The second that happened, I [thought], 'I am sending someone.' We cover the story. We bring it back locally."

Goldklank runs her station with an aggressive approach that one might find on a national network or cable news station. She sent Hausle to Minnesota to show that WHDH was there for the big story. She wanted Boston viewers to see the story from a local face.

What is the evidence for her non-involvement, Steve?

trust me...

By steve weeb on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 5:51pm.

she may give the okay on going across the country to cover a story, but day to day, she (and other g-ms) has other things to worry about.
again, a "salesperson" putting a spin on how things work.
they don't have time to micro-manage daily news content.
and, i have no hard evidence to offer you, just first-hand knowledge.

Let the healing begin

By adamg on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:29pm.

This just in: Channel 7 parent company: Goldklank 'deeply regretful'.

Vague

By Gareth on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 2:55pm.

"The unfortunate events of last Sunday night were unanticipated," Ed Ansin said in a statement.

Riight. Unanticipated. Is this a blinding statement of the obvious, or is it just me? Because if the, um, unfortunate events had been anticipated, they'd have been what? Premeditated? Or perhaps avoided?

Goldklank is undergoing medical treatment and has been placed on administrative leave, Ansin said.

More vagueness. Medical treatment for what? For being a boozer? Or is this the same (self-)medication she was rocking on Sunday? I guess it depends on what is is. Or what the judge says. Or what the lawyers tell her to say. Or something like that.

I believe it's entirely true she's deeply regretful. I would be. What exactly she's regretful for... tune in later!

Wrong word used?

By Ron Newman on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 3:08pm.

I wonder if 'regrettable' was intended here instead.

vague ?

By Mike on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 5:06pm.

any person who upon gaining a measure of sobriey days after an alcoholic rage in which they assaulted an armed MA State Trooper would hopefully be feeling... "regret"....if not, then heavy medication in a locked facility would be recommended.
"feeling regret" ?...DUH !!!! In a drunken stupor this nitwit attacked an armed cop and threatened him and his associates and her "defence" is that she was supposedly "groped" by an unknown person on the plane whom she fails to identify and fails to swear out a complaint against. What she does do, though, is to suggest to one of the arresting officers that they should get together.
That's certainly my idea of an ideal date...a drunken, assualtive, lying, legless falling down cross-addicted drunken imbecile.. where do we sign up for that blind date ???

In other words, yeah, I still have a copy. It's basically more of the same as the excerpt above.

Repost it here for posterity?

By Ron Newman on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 3:25pm.

Might be a good idea.

This might explain why Diaz's post is no longer up

By adamg on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 4:47pm.

Adam Reilly quotes from the Globe's newsroom policy on blogging:

If a staff member publishes a personal Web page or blog on a site outside the Globe’s control, the staff member has a duty to make sure that the content is purely that: personal. Staff members who write blogs should generally avoid topics they cover professionally; failure to do so would invite a confusion of roles.

Given that Diaz not only wrote the profile of Goldklank last fall but was involved in covering her recent freefall flight, I could see a Globe editor calling him out for calling out the Globe.