Acting like you’ve been there pretty good advice

Whenever some television network news anchor or reporter prefaces his report by stating that the network “has learned” this, that or the other thing, you can be pretty much assured that the story has been leaked to the network by some spin doctor to serve his client’s nefarious purposes.

A corollary to this theory is that even as Network A is claiming that the report you are about to hear is an “exclusive” – implying that it can be heard on that network alone – everyone else in the news business is likely simultaneously airing or publishing the same report, more than a few of them claiming the same exclusivity.

The subcorollary to the corollary: While news media outfits often take great pains to toot their own horns about their alleged “exclusives,” the viewing and reading public could not possibly care less.

Each time Katie Couric warns me she is about to deliver “a CBS exclusive,” I look her squarely in the CBS eye and tell her, “No one cares, Katie. Just skip the hype and give me the news, sweetheart.” To date, there is no evidence that I have gotten through to her, but I continue to tilt at the windmill, nonetheless.

The best editors and the classiest operations, I have found, are generally squeamish about inserting the “exclusive” bug in a story, no matter how hard and long the reportial staff has toiled on the project. If their newspaper or television station truly is the only media outlet to have the story, it will be readily apparent to the reader or the viewer when he doesn’t read it in any other newspaper or see it on another television channel. Not that he will much give a hoot, one way or the other.

Banging the drum about an alleged scoop has always seemed to me to be akin to some National Football League linebacker stopping an opposing ball carrier dead in his tracks and then celebrating like he has just single-handedly won World War II, rather than doing what he gets paid to do, which is stop opposing ball carriers.

I once asked an old football coach for his opinion of the inane showboat jitterbugging and shucking and jiving that goes on in the end zone in professional football games these days. He said his philosophy, which he drills into his players, is that it’s best to “act like you’ve been there before,” hand the football to the official after scoring your touchdown, and get on with the game.

The same goes for scoring a scoop in journalism, I should think. Or doing the job in any other walk of life, for that matter.

The sharp-witted arts critic George S. Kaufman once counseled as much in a critique of actor Raymond Massey’s peformance in the production “Abe Lincoln in Illinois. “Massey won’t be satisfied until he’s assassinated,” Kaufman wrote, in suggesting that Massey was perhaps overplaying the title role just a tad.

From what I saw on television earlier this week, the judge in the bizarre court hearing involving the various golddiggers attempting to cash in on the legacy of Anna Nicole Smith, the late bleached plastic creation who was famous for being famous, could stand to learn how to act like he’s been there before, too.

The camera caught Hizzoner crying on the bench at one point in the proceedings. Granted, the prospect of trying to straighten out that particular convoluted horror show in a court of law is enough to make most any grown may cry. But, still …

The kids and their coaches from high schools throughout eastern Maine participating in the week’s annual basketball tournaments at the Bangor Auditorium and Augusta Civic Center by and large acted like they had been there before – winning with class and losing with dignity. Ditto, the referees working the games, who established early on that they would not be timid about slapping technical fouls on players and coaches who questioned their competence and-or ancestry. “Teeing them up,” it is called in the trade, and depending upon whose ox is being gored at the moment it can be a thing of beauty.

There are, I suppose, occasions when it is just as well that you not act as though you’ve been there before. Being caught in the arms of your best friend’s wife is one that readily springs to mind. Appearing before a hanging judge on a violation-of-parole rap is another.

But as a general rule, “act like you’ve been there before” would seem to be sound advice for anyone contemplating his or her first rodeo.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.