Fred Young

RTDNF First Amendment Awards Dinner

Fred Young speaks after accepting the RTNDF First Amendment Service Award on March 13, 2002, in Washington. Fred Young is the senior vice president of news for Hearst-Argyle Television based in New York.

"It's an honor to be introduced by Frank Bennack, one of the most respected chief executive officers in our industry. And, Frank, thank you so much for coming tonight and thank you for our confidence in our news departments. Frank is retiring from the Hearst presidency in a few months, but he'll continue as chairman of the executive committee and his influence and wisdom will be with us for many years, and all of my colleagues, I think, are very happy for that.

Much of Frank's respect for the First Amendment has been passed on to me through great broadcasters like John Conomikes and David Barrett, both of whom you saw on the videotape. They've taken our company to a leadership position in our industry and I would like you to say hello to them."

While I would admit to making a couple of good business decisions during my career, my best personal decision was choosing Judy Young as a partner 39 years ago. While I worried about a television station, she devoted her time to raising three kids, now with wonderful spouses and three beautiful grandchildren.

And talking about family: two great colleagues, whose careers were really on the cusp here tonight, Candy Altman and Brian Bracco.

As we near the end to a long evening you're probably wondering what we could learn from a guy who has had one wife and one job over the last forty years. Well, first of all, not everybody is a risk taker. Second, and relevant to the reason we're here tonight, local television news is a good place to spend your career. Local news is the gateway to the First Amendment for millions of Americans. Iowa State professor, Craig Allen, recently wrote a book about local television news. In the beginning he wrote that, "from obscure beginnings 50 years ago, local news television news has become the prime component, the largest component of U.S. media, and a source of information to 150 million Americans." He went on to say that every day as many Americans watch local news as watch the Super Bowl. At a time when confidence in the news media is in decline, local television news has nearly a 70 percent public approval rating.

Now that's why we have a responsibility to improve the quality of our news at local stations. We need to let our viewers and our colleagues know that without us that scope of national television news would be sufficiently reduced. Local television stations working to cover the grass roots of our communities as well as the never ending abundance of breaking news are the source of much news content for our network partners and cable news organizations.

Local news is relevant and dependable. We face our own economic challenges and we work hard to improve our product and widen our audience. A brief comment about the First Amendment, which is why we're here tonight. Not all of the people who work for us in our newsrooms are as passionate about the First Amendment as we would for them to be. Perhaps it's the excessive talk about the future of broadcast journalism that makes them less than enthusiastic about their chosen profession. We need to work harder to make our editorial employees appreciate the legacy of the constitutional protection of a free press.

Occasionally, we're challenged to protect the integrity of our content by defending against the encroachment of a sales department who look at our news for a short-term revenue gain. We will continue to fight for a separation of news and sales, and for the protection of our ability to have a free press, hoping that our audience growth will create the revenue that we need to improve our journalism. Television news departments around the country will continue to innovate, we'll develop our expertise on the Internet, and create partnerships with print journalism as well.

Sam alluded to the recent dispute about the network news issues, so I won't get into that, but I'll only close by saying that for 50 years local television news has been part of the fiber of America's free press. Hearst-Argyle stations alone reach 5.5 million viewers a day with their morning, early evening and late night news casts. If you add the hundreds of stations across the country and you have millions and millions of viewers watching local news everyday, I submit that local television news is a source of information for the American public of which we can all be proud.

Thank you very much

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