Yes, as it turns out. And it can be a happily productive one. Just ask former ABC television journalist and correspondent, Erin Hayes, now a professor of the Practice of Journalism at College of the Ozarks at Point Lookout, Mo. Hayes was June’s featured speaker at the Green Forest Library where she spoke to and answered questions from an attentive audience interested in the changing landscape of television news.
Hayes’s own enthusiasm for storytelling landed on its feet in 1976 at the College of the Ozarks where she studied English, Theater and Speech, earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and worked at the college’s public radio station. She also became certified as a high school English teacher and earned a pilot’s license.
Following graduation in 1979, what would become a three-decade career in journalism began to unfold at KTHS Radio in Berryville and continued to grow at KY3-TV in Springfield, Mo. In 1988 Hayes joined WDAF-TV in Kansas City as an investigative reporter.
The quality of her work made it a short hop to becoming a correspondent for CBS News in 1989 in the New York Bureau. In 1993, she joined ABC News as a correspondent in the network’s Midwest Bureau in Chicago, moving to ABC’s Southern Bureau in 1998. In addition to her spot news coverage, Hayes also contributed investigative and feature reports seen on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, Nightline and other news programs.
In the 30-plus years from covering city council meetings for KTHS to working with Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and other network notables, Hayes has seen and reported on the best and worst of our country’s human drama; covering the nation’s reactions during the War in Iraq, the search for clues and debris following the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, the Oklahoma City bombing, providing daily reports on the nation’s reaction to 9/11 – as well as the effects of countless natural disasters – in addition to covering happier important events and interviews.
Her work has earned the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award three times, as well as the national Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting and the National Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. She has also received three duPont Columbia awards and was recognized for her work during ABC News coverage of 9/11.
All this to say that Erin Hayes knows what she’s talking about when it comes to the importance of communicating reliable information with integrity when trying to navigate the times that are upon us.
Does she miss that life? When she retired at 55, Hayes confessed that two weeks later the desire to do that work, to be “the one to go,” just disappeared. “I missed the people, the camaraderie,” Hayes said, “but the drive just went away.”
The drive returned when Hayes realized the country’s need for “good, honest, ethical journalists,” and told herself “I’d better put my money where my mouth is.” In 2010 she returned to her alma mater in a teaching capacity and now teaches more than a dozen separate journalism courses, all designed to help students develop into skilled, objective, truth-seeking young journalists.
And it’s working. Since 2018 her students have amassed 150 awards for excellence in journalism in various categories. Last year, student journalists from “The Point” Broadcast Newsroom at College of the Ozarks were recognized with 27 awards for outstanding broadcast journalism.
Hayes’s classes always begin with #1 – the First Amendment, which students recite at every class.
“The First Amendment gave me the ability to speak without fear,” Hayes said. “The only fear I had was the fear of being sued if I got it wrong.”
In her classes, students learn how to navigate bias, how to tell truth from a lie, how to discern whether the story leans left or right, how to think critically and think for themselves, and to watch adjectives and adverbs that imply something beyond the fact or are even patently untrue, such as naming “the failed New York Times” when the paper is actually experiencing growth.
Hayes said her students give today’s broadcast news media a 4 or 5 out of 10 for accurate reporting.
“Digging for the truth is hard,” Hayes admitted, “and not everyone wants to work that hard. The public doesn’t. They prefer to be told.
“A student may say, ‘But it’s easier to do it this way,’ to which my response is, ‘But it’s not the truth.’ There are always a few young people attracted by the idea of a reporting job on television, but most drop out when they realize how much actual work is involved in truthful reporting.”
In the Q & A session following her presentation, Hayes was asked about a journalist being ejected from a news briefing and not allowed to attend any thereafter.
“The First Amendment preserves the journalist’s right to publish content,” Hayes replied, “but it doesn’t necessarily protect journalists from rules set in place by individual jurisdictions about how a journalist can work in that jurisdiction.
“Journalists have tremendous freedom to do their work in the United States, and that can be frustrating to people who believe that too many journalists in the U.S. are not performing their work ethically and may be doing harm not just to their profession, but to the nation. I understand that. However, limiting the freedom of journalists to pursue truth in their profession is a risky endeavor.
“When you limit all journalists, that means you’re limiting the ability of the good ones to pursue truth. Our nation needs good journalists, and that is something the nation’s founders understood and sought to protect. In 1794, in a letter to Charles Thurston, President George Washington wrote, ‘Truth will ultimately prevail where pain is taken to bring it to light.’
“I teach my students that journalism is ‘the pursuit, gathering, and sharing of the truth about people and the events and things that affect them.’ I teach that their work as a journalist affects people. It affects their lives, their well-being, their families, their businesses, their communities. Journalists have influence, and that influence comes with a tremendous responsibility to seek the truth diligently, carefully and compassionately.
“It is a journalist’s job to take great pains to bring truth to light, fulfilling the vision that George Washington and others had for a free and independent press. The profession of journalism needs good, honest, truth-seeking young people to fill its ranks, and our graduates of ‘The Point’ are proving to be well-suited for that mission.
“I would say this: think about all we work to protect for ourselves and our loved ones: our health, our safety, our personal information, our money, our home, our property, etc. However, I don’t think that most people think about protecting their peace of mind. I believe peace of mind is a very important thing to protect. But protecting our peace of mind doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s going on in the world. We just need to be judicious about it. Most people tend to be judicious about protecting their personal safety. They lock their doors and stay aware about any safety threats, but they don’t freak out or short out.
“That’s what we all need to do about the fire hose of information coming at us – some of it true and accurate, some of it not entirely accurate, and some of it straight-out deceptive. One of my favorite phrases to use in our student newsroom is ‘Consider the source.’ When we come across something we’re not entirely sure is true, we need to ask: ‘Where did this come from? Is that source trustworthy? Do they have reason to know that what they’re sharing here is true?
“I’ll add, too, that it’s important to pray about all of this. Pray for the truth to prevail, pray to be able to discern what’s true, pray for the fortitude to navigate the news content of the day wisely and well – to preserve one’s peace of mind while discovering what is happening outside our little circle today.
“With time, it becomes easier to discern the ethical, truth-sharing news sources. And I encourage people to pray for the nation’s journalists. I’m not practicing journalism at present as I train a new generation of journalists, but I still consider myself a journalist, and we need all the prayers we can get.”