680News - Lisa Brandt

Would you rather hear the news first? Or would you rather hear it right? Most times, we are both the first to bring you a breaking story and to have our facts in order. But given the choice, I would always take facts over being fast.

News comes to us any number of ways; from our excellent reporters, from our news affiliates, and from you, via the 680News Tip Line at 416-872-NEWS. Although you may consider yourself to be a completely reliable source, any tips we receive must be checked out with the proper authorities before they can go to air. Other radio station newsrooms have actually been known to call in fake tips in hopes that one of our editors will be foolish enough to accept it as fact. They’d like to make us look rash and unreliable. We refuse to give them the satisfaction! Once a tip is quickly verified it’s all systems go.

Sometimes the anchors don’t see the breaking news until just before it goes to air. Sometimes we see it first. It all depends on the method of delivery.

My co-anchor Paul Cook once described 680News as the MASH unit of news. We are in the business of getting it together and up and on the air with surgical skill. But you should see some of the instruments we operate with! When things are done so quickly they are sometimes imperfect behind the scenes. What does it matter to you if my unintelligible scribble is what I’m working from to bring you a breaking news item, as long as I get it right? I know what I have written! And if I can spit out the proper words, that’s what matters.

Sometimes what you’re hearing is a complete ad-lib. Other times our editor whispers the item to us through our headsets and we repeat her words to you. There’s no “procedure” for handling breaking news. 9-11 taught us that. After that date, the days of managing the way information came to us were over. We adapted to a new style of seat-of-your-pants journalism that made even the already fast pace of 680News step it up to keep up with the changing events. We serve it to you hot, fresh and fast – but first, we’ll make sure it’s right.

Some phrases that occasionally come up in newscasts make the little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention with irritation. Occasionally they are put in a story by rote, perhaps even originating from a network source. Radio is certainly not alone in perpetuating these inaccuracies. You’ll also read them in newspapers and hear them on T.V.

My Top Three Repeat Offenders are:

“Convicted pedophile” - Pedophilia is a psychiatric diagnosis and not a criminal offence. One cannot be “convicted” of being a pedophile.

“Anti-war protest” - If this one were accurate those taking part would actually be in favour of war! A better way to word it would be “anti-war demonstration” or “war protest.”

“With the Humidex” - When a newscaster tells you “it’s ___ degrees with the Humidex,” just replace Humidex with the word, thermometer. If someone said, “It’s ___ degrees with the thermometer,” you’d ask if they recently struck their head on something hard! The Humidex is like a thermometer that measures humidity. So it’s ON the Humidex, not WITH it.

I’m sure there are many others that get under your skin, too. Feel free to share them here. And have a terrific weekend, won’t you?

At 680News, we realize that you’re not listening to us for 24 hours straight, 7 days a week. We really wish that you would, but we recognize that you’re not! And in those times that we’re not part of your routine, we know you’re doing things with your families and friends, working and exploring other forms of information and entertainment. Our challenge is to figure out which of these competing media are important to you.

With movies, it’s easy. The Monday box office results tell us most of what we need to know. Newspapers and magazines have sales figures. Music is also rated by sales and downloads. But when it comes to television, it’s an entirely different story.

But Lisa, you may say, they do conduct ratings for TV shows! Sure they do – for the big networks in the U.S. and the major players here in Canada. But that’s pretty old school thinking, wouldn’t you agree? There are hundreds of channels and thousands of TV shows. I’m a huge fan of Entourage, for example, which never makes the top 10, yet it has a large and devoted following for an HBO show.

You can obtain viewer numbers for hits that have built on buzz, like the Sopranos, but what about Holmes on Holmes for example? We don’t get a weekly reading of Mike Holmes’ popularity but we know it exists. And having been his Home Show partner in a building competition, I have had the pleasure of witnessing his prowess with power tools up close. I mention that here only because I can never pass on the chance to tell anyone who will listen (or read) that he and I were once partnered in a show, in matching overalls no less! But I digress. The coverage of Mike and his show and his name recognition factor in other media and the buzz from people we know and meet help to prove his widespread appeal.

You need a news team with diverse tastes and interests to plug into the wide-ranging interests of the listeners. One of our former writers was married to an avid video gamer and he kept us up on the latest game info and trends. One of our team members never misses reality shows. We also find out about little cliques of fans for shows via Facebook groups. I am a stand-up comedy junkie and generally know if a particular comedian is well known enough to be worth discussing. It’s not that we push our own personal agendas – not at all – but each of us offers a perspective that the others might not have. It’s what makes us click and compliment each other.

On any given news day, priorities emerge. A story that can seem very important at 5:30 a.m. when we kick off the show can become irrelevant very quickly if something new develops.

Last week, in a tragic accident, a little boy fell from the 11th floor of his apartment building and we got word from reporter Carl Hantske that the child was being rushed by ambulance to hospital with vital signs absent. Like you, our hearts sink when we hear about such an occurrence, but we focus on our jobs, carry on and bring the story to you. It immediately became our lead, bumping our original lead story to second and on down the line until some stories we had initially felt strongly about were no longer in the show.

This morning, shortly after we started on the air with our reporters and story line-ups in place, a tanker-truck flipped over on the 401 westbound west of Keele causing another instant priority shift.

That’s what we mean when we say “the news is always changing.” Some days it changes quickly, some days, not so much. But when it does, there is a mad scramble behind the scenes.

Reporters race to new locations, information is fed via Blackberry and telephone and Paul, our senior writer Jennifer and I must work fast to update our copy. Our editor, Elizabeth Harrison, is responsible for managing the changing of assignments and fact-checking. Everyone knows his or her role but we have compared the manoeuvre to turning a ship around – it’s a mammoth task. Lucky for us, we all thrive on the challenge and for me, it’s one of the best parts of my job: teamwork. There’s nothing quite like working like a demon and knowing that your teammates are doing the same, for a common cause. It’s an adrenaline rush that we thrive on.

We don’t expect you to really care too much about what it takes to change things around to create a better program. It’s our job! But we hope you know we put our hearts and brains into it, every day.

The lengths some people will go to just to make a name for themselves.

A Chinese reporter is in big trouble after faking a news story about food from street vendors. He allegedly had some friends soak cardboard in pork fat and claimed he caught vendors stuffing their buns with the papery filler.

The story came out in the wake of several tainted food scandals out of China involving pet foods, toothpaste and dyed egg yolks. The reporter says he was assigned to find problems in the Beijing “street meat” industry and after two weeks he had come up empty. He claims he was under increasing pressure from his editor to find a story so he made one up. It aired on Beijing’s Life Channel and then again on China Central Television. On YouTube, it was viewed thousands of times.

Word of the bun-stuffing story spread quickly in the internet and sparked health authorities to launch an investigation. They found no cardboard stuffing and determined that it would be impossible for customers not to notice they were biting into so much paper, even if it was soaked with a porky substance.

Beijing TV apologized to viewers and the reporter is now in police hands. It’s not clear what will happen to him.

Here in this city, the health department has decided that street vendors can continue to sell only hot dogs and sausages until next spring. That’s when they hope to have everything worked out with regard to sanitary concerns and cart owners will be able to offer items including pizzas, smoothies and corn on the cob. But no pork-soaked cardboard.

This week, the publisher of the Harry Potter books, Raincoast, pleaded with fans to keep the details of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a secret until everyone has had a chance to read it.

This is a tricky bit of business. Many who pre-ordered the book will have it delivered to their homes. They should be able to dig into the seventh book in the series around the same time as those who are heading out to a store to buy a copy. But everyone reads at a different pace. Some who can’t stand the suspense will probably flip through to find out who dies as long promised by author JK Rowling. But will they ruin it for everybody else?

Some people claim to already have leaked copies of the book and they’re posting the names of various characters whom they claim don’t make it until the final pages. One file-sharing website claims to show the actual photocopied pages posted for all to see. No one really knows if these people are correct but they certainly are annoying.

If you are planning on a media blackout to avoid having the plot ruined, here at 680News we promise we won’t give away the plot points on air. After all, we have families too and we want to make sure that everyone has a chance to enjoy the fun of the last volume in the Potter phenomenon. However, some other media are taking a different stand. Some newspapers have said they will reveal the secrets but they’ll put a “spoiler alert” ahead of any mentions. You can listen here without fear but you’ll need to read with care.

We in the newsroom found it fascinating and a little bit funny that CBS news anchor Katie Couric actually banned the word “sputum” from all future newscasts.

It seems that sputum caught the struggling anchor by surprise one evening and she mispronounced it and was embarrassed live on network television. Couric admitted that after the show she went on an arm-and-chest-punching rant against the reporter who wrote it into her copy. Sputum was then banned by the anchor.

There have been attempts to remove various words from the 680 lexicon from time to time, depending on the tastes of editors.

One editor used to remove the word “posh” from any script. She disliked the word almost as much as another editor who hated “moist”. We were once advised to discontinue the use of “youth” because it was too vague. The trouble was, police and other media use youth liberally and it’s hard to ignore. It’s also in the title of an important police act - The Youth Criminal Justice Act.

But how do you actually remove a word from the language? I don’t think you can. All it will take is someone new to come on staff at CBS and not get the word on the unofficial ban and … watch out for the punching to begin!

I’m no Katie Couric but I do know that I wouldn’t want my colleagues to be too afraid to use a word. Not that sputum comes up often, mind you. But when it does, it should be free to be heard!

Everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. Absolutely no one is completely perfect although that’s the goal we strive for. The difference between your mistakes and mine is that thousands upon thousands of people tend to notice when I do it. Depending on what you do for a living that may not be the case when you err.

We all want to do a great job and be as accurate as we possibly can be. By and large we are like Ivory soap, 99.9 per cent pure – or error-free! But every once in a while something gets past us and we wear a collective blush until it’s corrected.

Our facts are checked and double-checked before they ever get to air but in the business of breaking news things can change on a dime. I’m reminded of the long day we all spent on the air, September 11, 2001. There was no way to understand the scope of what was going on when that first plane hit the World Trade Center and it was our job to not speculate but to bring you the facts as they were brought to us. They changed as the day wore on. It was as terrifying for us as it was for you that day. We were all grateful to have something demanding to concentrate on: our broadcasts.

Most errors are very minor in nature. Perhaps a reporter catches a few seconds with a police officer on the scene of the crime and that officer gives the information as best he knows it at the time. For example, he might say the victim is believed to be in his 30s. Hours later when the victim is positively identified, it turns out that he’s 21, but no one could have ascertained that at the time. That’s the kind of information that evolves as a story unfolds. It is a mistake but a very minor one and quite unavoidable. It certainly bears revising once it’s confirmed.

I once had an embarrassing brain freeze over a silly thing: Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock. I know who they are, believe me. When we were kids my younger brother held the television hostage whenever Star Trek was on so I’m well acquainted in Mr. Spock’s Vulcan ways. Dr. Spock, as you probably know, was a legendary child-rearing expert. But there was something about this occasion when I was called upon suddenly to name one of them that caused me to mix them up. Fortunately my faithful work husband Paul Cook was there to gently steer me back to the right Spock!

No one likes to be wrong and they like even less to be wrong in a public manner. With our team approach to news and the number of experienced people who work on both sides of the microphone, I can truly say that we are as reliable with the facts as anyone, anywhere, and even more so in most cases. We have great senses of humour – all of us – but we take the business of news very seriously indeed.

Ginormous is now a legitimate word. I’ve always used it as a bit of a jokey way of combining gigantic and enormous but now the two are married forever in the new Mirriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It’s one of 100 new entries into this year’s edition.

Also added: Bollywood, sudoku, speed dating, DVR (digital video recorder), IED (improvised explosive device) and smackdowns.

Serious wordsmiths are taking issue with some of the additions, claiming they won’t have staying power in our vocabulary. They’re like the pet rocks of the word world. But the dictionary’s President says they’ve traced “ginormous” back to 1948 military slang. He also says it has appeared in many newspaper and magazine articles written by professional writers and that’s something they watch for before declaring a suspected word a real word.

I wonder, though, if you have to explain a word to the average person, how it rates entry into the book. Among the entries: microgreen, defined as a shoot of a standard salad plant. You can grow a salad plant? Gray literature is written material that’s hard to obtain. And crunk is a style of Southern rap music. They certainly seem like fringe words to me and would definitely require clarification in a conversation with most people I know. Let’s put it this way; don’t expect to hear 680’s Music Reporter Rudy Blair with a weekly crunk report.

Take Paris Hilton. (Please!) Lots of people wonder what this spoiled socialite has done to possibly warrant coverage on an all-news station but the fact remains, she made news. She is an obscenely rich young woman who is an heir to the Hilton Hotel fortune and she has been making terrible choices in her young life, a few of which landed her in jail. That is very different from the tabloid journalism aspect of her existence: whom she is dating, which nightclub she got intoxicated in, etc. Sometimes it appears the lines get blurred but in our minds, the differences are very distinct.

Meanwhile, methinks many of those who say they aren’t interested in gossip doth protest too much. Yahoo Canada’s recent “buzz index” of web searches shows Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were the top search choices for teens and young adults under 25 but the dynamic duo also ranked on top of searches conducted by the 25-45-age category. Even if these adults were merely seeking out the latest on these troubled young women only to have something to talk with their teens about over dinner, they were still showing an interest.

Many of those who complain about the coverage of Paris’s latest exploits also happen to know exactly what the woman has been up to. There’s nothing wrong with getting an occasional, carefully selected bit of juicy gossip in your day. Think of it as a small serving of sweet sorbet to cleanse the palate between the courses of “real” news stories.

All concerned will be happy that it now seems we’ve reached a saturation point as a society for all things Paris. She’ll have to do something pretty fascinating now to warrant the kind of coverage she’s been attracting. Even some magazines have promised to go “Paris Free”. The people have spoken and it appears enough is enough, depending on what she does next, which no one can predict!