The Story Shutdown

We broke it...and then were forced to sit on it.

“The story can’t run,” crackled over the speakerphone.

“What do you mean it can’t run?” I asked firmly, sitting in a chair beside my bureau chief’s desk.

“You don’t have enough, and you’ll need at least three people on camera.”

“That makes zero sense. Not only is the story true—and now verified by other outlets—but I’ve got five sources, and I know them all. And we were the ones who broke it,” I shot back.

He grew more desperate—louder, more argumentative—as if his life depended on killing the story.

It was Monday, just a couple of hours before we were set to air part two.

At Fox, at least when I was there, the structure was layered. You had multiple bosses operating in three chains: news, politics, and international. News flowed through New York; political stories ran through Washington, D.C. There was overlap, but ultimately New York deferred to D.C. on anything political, including final script approval. That process alone could be tedious—waiting for producers in D.C. to comb through your script, making sure every word, angle, and implication passed muster. I loved working with them, and almost always it was a debate over whether to use “which” or “that”.

In general, though, with political stories, it was always more of a time battle. Adding extra layers led to more opinions, semantic debates, and delays. Add in controversial subject matter, and the DC Bureau Chief would often step in, creating yet another hurdle. All of it was meant to ensure accuracy—but it also meant friction at times and ultimately a time crunch come editing time.