Dane Placko must have had a nice buy-line that night. I don't ever remember this type of unethical issue with Aaron's anchoring. I also don't remember as CNNs Senior Anchor, Aaron having an issue with 'immediate' information for Breaking News. CNN 'had' an edge that Aaron Brown maintained with fervor, evidently all the necessity of survival of CNN has fallen away with Junior Achievement at the helm.
Aaron once said of Peter Jennings, (paraphrasing) 'An anchor could easily come into the studio and read through a news program prepared and prioritized by assistants, producers, directors and writers, however, that was never the bad habits of Peter Jennings.' Evidently, it wasn't the habit of Aaron Brown either.
CNN boasts Aaron Brown was negligent in coming to the Anchor Desk during the last crash of the shuttle due to his golfing habits. That never sounded like Aaron Brown to me. But to CNN it was the only objection they had of a man that carried more than his fair share of those operations as a Managing Editor. You'll excuse me but the greater 'Truth' of the circumstances surrounding Aaron and reporting to CNN on the day the shuttle went down is that he was at a charity golf outing and he felt an obligation to finish his 'place' on the celebrity list as well. He wasn't preoccupied with perfecting his golf stroke over the responsibilities at CNN. Typical of Aaron was a habit of setting priorities and carrying through with commitments. That characteristic played out every newscast he put before his viewership and every evening of NewsNight.
Aaron Brown would sooner do without than poach another's broadcast but what is more important is that he would have made sure his bases were covered before he broadcast without the help or indulgence of another newscaster or service. He would have had a CNN microphone and journalist on his video. I can't imagine Aaron Brown risking the chance people would go to FOX network with realization CNN didn't have their act together.
CNN has done their viewership an injustice by replacing Aaron Brown with a far less experienced journalist as an anchor that bridges 'the gap' of expertise with his senior pier with ruthless tactics to invade FOX's space rather than elevating the expertise of CNN. Contract or not this issue shows the level of 'priviledge' this news team feels they have to succeed. They demoralized the news hour with Aaron Brown out of pure ambition without quality and they are now after Greta van Susteren, apologizing and patting themselves on the back all at the same time. Pirates. CNN's new flagship anchor is a pirate.
CNN, Fox News double up on Chicago report
Published December 11, 2005
For a little while Thursday night, as snow swirled around the accident scene at Chicago's Midway Airport, the most important man in all of cable TV news was none other than WFLD-Ch. 32 reporter Dane Placko.
Placko, between live on-scene dispatches for Channel 32, was wrapping up an interview with an area resident as part of a report especially for Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren around 9:40 p.m. when CNN's Anderson Cooper also cut to him."
I heard Greta in my ear. I was having a conversation with her, but obviously Anderson Cooper was listening in as well," Placko said Friday.
"I was on quite a while with her. It seemed to go fairly well and, as we were wrapping up, I heard [another] voice in my ear--the [Fox] producer in New York, I believe--say, `Oh, by the way, you were also on CNN.' I'm thinking to myself: `Wait a minute. I'm talking to Greta. How can I be on CNN at the same time?'"
The reason is CNN has an affiliate agreement with WFLD, a Fox-owned station, as it does with several other Chicago TV outlets. So it can run material from WFLD, just as archrival Fox News Channel can. But if a reporter is talking directly to one network, it's customary for the other to back off."
Typically you wouldn't want to show Dane Placko speaking to another network," said David Rhodes, Fox News Channel's director of newsgathering. "You'd wait until that's done and your desk would traffic with WFLD, `OK, can we have Dane when Fox is done with him?' Well, they obviously couldn't wait.
"Dane had something good that he was giving to Greta, so they just took it," Rhodes said. "And that's how you end up in a position where Cooper is showing Dane talking to Greta. The good part of it is Dane Placko is such a star, he's on two channels at once."
The poaching was "unintentional," a CNN spokeswoman said. The network said it looked as though he was just interviewing an eyewitness.
"That's what I would say," Rhodes said. "I would be, `Uh, yeah, we didn't know,' and `It was breaking news.' Those are all my stock answers. You call me back next week if we make a mistake and I'll say the same thing. But how could you not know?"
Copying Fox News Channel has its benefits. While Cooper normally gets clobbered by CNN alumna Van Susteren--since launching in the first week of November, on average, he trails Van Susteren by nearly 1 million viewers in the 9 p.m. hour--the gap Thursday was far smaller, a little more than 400,000.
But planes don't skid off runways every night, and you don't always get to cherrypick Placko, who wound up at the Midway crash by happenstance.
He was inching down the Stevenson Expressway for a story on the snowstorm's effect on traffic when he heard a bulletin on WBBM-AM 780. Already at the airport was Channel 32's Lilia Chacon, who had planned to report on flight delays.
"Like an idiot, I didn't even check to see how the weather was going to be yesterday and leave the house wearing dress shoes and the basic winter jacket," Placko said. "I had no idea this snowstorm was coming.
"So I get out there [at Midway] and it's just coming down like crazy. Within 10 minutes, my shoes were soaked through and I was freezing cold.
"Yet he also was never hotter.
Cutting room: Station manager Dominic Mancuso is out at WGN-Ch. 9, which is eliminating his position. WGN, like this paper, is owned by Tribune Co.
Around the horn: Norman Chad's syndicated sports column of "23 (more) facts, tried and true, about the widening world of sports television" was reduced to "22 (more) facts" in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times.
The version that ran in the Washington Post and many other papers, but not the Sun-Times, included: "If I were on the 37th floor of a building and Jay Mariotti came into the elevator, I guess I'd take the stairs."
Note to Chad: I have been in elevators with Mariotti. I have ridden in cars with him. We've shared flights, both domestic and international, and at least one train trip. It was fine.
The last word: "Kevin is so conservative he wants to take the F out of the FCC."--National Association of Broadcasters President Emeritus Eddie Fritts, at a roast Thursday of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, according to Broadcasting & Cable.----------
Phil Rosenthal's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.
philrosenthal@tribune.com
