“Did you see Adam Sallet’s live shot on KIMT?” I asked my wife on our way home after work. As you may have heard, Sallet, a reporter for the local television station, found himself in the middle of breaking news while a suspect in a local bank robbery walked by him filming. Sallet was covering the bank robbery story when an employee of the bank came running out of the businesses to inform Sallet that the robber was in fact just out of frame.

Live on air, Sallet had the common sense to wrap up the live coverage and call the police. If you haven’t had a chance to watch the clip, I encourage you to look it up online. His live shot has since gone viral and was featured on multiple national news channels.

It was a remarkable situation that many reporters dream of stumbling upon, but it was Sallet’s response to the breaking news that restored my faith in humanity. We all need a little glimmer of hope, so I wanted to write this week to share with you why this clip impacted me in a great way.

Being in the business of reporting the news is often a thankless job. It’s not a job I’ve ever held, but as a public relations professional, I actively try to get in the mind of a journalist. The majority of people I follow on Twitter are journalists, and I’m certain my most viewed Facebook pages are from news organizations ranging in focus from worldwide trends to your very own Albert Lea Tribune. I read the comments on many posts, and I see the constructive (and sometimes not so constructive feedback) that journalists get. It can be brutal out there.

It often seems good reporters are desperately trying to share stories of relevance when viewers might just want to see puppy photos. Just earlier this week, I honestly saw a news organization share a gallery of reader’s puppy photos. The lead comment was something along the lines of, “We need more news like this.” I beg to differ. Perhaps people want more uplifting news, but puppy photos don’t count as news.

In a world where content is now king, news media are caving to the desires of what their viewers most want rather than producing real news. This means we see an increase in fluff and entertainment pieces like celebrity birth stories. They may be interesting, but not something of national or local importance in most cases. Crime, no matter how depressing, will always bring in viewers. Immediate crime is even better because it means reports can break news. Unfortunately, the immediacy of a story is now more important than the content itself in a lot of cases. These stories are sharing that something happened, but we don’t know what it was. I sincerely hope that isn’t what is being taught in journalism school. If you don’t have the details, you don’t have the story.

Sallet wasn’t on the scene to report breaking news, but it happened anyway. He could have easily left the frame of his live shot, pointed his camera at the suspect and made great television happen. If I was his producer, that’s exactly what I would have told him to do. Sallet didn’t do that though. Instead, he said, “This is live TV folks — that’s the robber that just went by. I’ve gotta go here and call 911. I’ll talk to you later.”

KIMT came back to the anchor at their desk and Sallet did what any other citizen should do: call the police. He remembered he was first a person — and second a journalist. This wasn’t about ratings. A suspect being arrested was more important than any footage he could get at that point, and he did the right thing. What would have happened if he turned the camera around? Sure, KIMT would have gotten some great coverage of a breaking news story, but there was no authentication to the facts being presented. It could have certainly been possible that the bank employee informing Sallet of the suspect’s presence was incorrect, and the breaking news coverage could have tarnished an innocent person’s reputation. While the police did in fact apprehend this suspect, there was no way for Sallet to know the validity of the banker’s claims.

This glimmer of hope reminded me that first and foremost, we are people. In all decisions, we should prioritize our actions to ensure we are doing the right thing. It’s so easy to get tangled up in the easy way, caught up in the excitement or shirk responsibility in hopes that someone else will pick up the slack. I hope we can all act a little bit more like Sallet and act on what matters when we we’re called to make a difference.

 

Rochester resident Matt Knutson is the communications and events director for United Way of Olmsted County.