TV news report says DC ambulance crew drove past house to nearby fire station to get crew there to take call. Report of 15 minute delay.

I don’t know the facts either and I have a lot of questions that aren’t answered by this report, but I have to respectfully disagree with you. How a government spends or misspends taxpayer dollars on public safety is not an internal personnel issue. That is a public issue. A free press is a watchdog of our governments, local, state and federal. The problem is not that there is too much light shed on these and other similar issues. It’s that there is too little.

Often the news media spends too much time showing us the dog from Chile that rescued its puppies but not enough time on basic services that mean life or death to humans. It would be great if all leaders provided true tranparency on the workings of their jurisdictions. Let people really see the good, bad and the ugly for themselves in an honest way. But that doesn’t happen too often.

Instead we have a free press that is supposed to be telling us these things. We shouldn’t allow the government to hide behind “it’s a personnel issue”. When the leaders want to for political purposes, they ALL talk about personnel issues. Trust me on that one. It is one of the most universal hypocritical statements you will ever hear from government officials.

And the public is also at fault. We don’t demand more from the news. We are satisfied with the Chile dog and say no big deal about a story like this because no one died. And the news media isn’t blameless. I had many a show producer through the years try to kill my stories about serious public safety issues because “no one died”. Only when someone did die were they suddenly interested.

Again, providing basic government services to the public isn’t going to get better by keeping everyone in the dark.
In this case, if the wrong ambulance was dispatched in the first place and then 15 minutes was lost doing an unauthorized ambulance swap that is a matter of public interest. The answers along with what the government is going to do to prevent this from happening again should be a matter of public record as soon as possible.

Statter

Bob,

For the record, it is no longer my profession and I am not defending it. My real defense is of the public’s right to know and of transparency in government. I blast the news media and the work of reporters quite regularly on here much as I critique the policies and techniques used by public safety to deal with the news media. Let me address a few of your points from my perspective.

I must assume that you are being sarcastic with this line – “how dare you speak about politicians utilizing personnel issues for gain in one breath and for hiding things in the very next breath.” In case you’re not, let me explain some more. I’ve watched this happen for 40 years and very little has changed. Leaders who tell us they can’t talk about an incident because it is a “personnel matter” will do so on the next story or when they don’t like the initial coverage of the first story, because it is politically expedient to do so. You won’t shake me from that position. It’s something I’ve studied quite closely. The shame here are reporters (including me, when I was one) who didn’t do enough to point out the many, many examples of this hypocrisy in the people and organizations they cover.

Yes, news organizations are given enormous leeway. It’s how our government was set up. It’s far from perfect. But I haven’t seen much better.

TV news began to go downhill when Don Hewitt proved it could make money.

The next thing that assured its downhill slide was when cable news came of age losing it’s virginity with the OJ Simpson case. The rest of the news business paid close attention as cable news operations time and time again went for the girl with the great body who put out on the first date and would attract a lot of looks from their friends (talking about the story selection and not the choice in anchors). But they weren’t the girls that they would take home to mom or want to have a conversation with. They’d drop them as soon as they weren’t hot or they got bored. They then quickly moved onto the next one that filled their “need” and got everyone to look their way.

The third thing that assured the demise of news in general is the Internet, particularly when social media came along to allow the public to really have news or what passes as news at their fingertips. That has brought the end or slow death of many major newspaper operations. Through laysoffs and buyouts important news operations have vanished. The newspapers used to set the agenda for news coverage in most cities. It was the newspaper that provided the lead for the wire services local operations and in turn many TV and radio news organizations. The quality has diminished greatly with the brain drain.

With these watch dogs gone or slowly dying there may soon be a time that there is no one to investigate our government the way the press in the United States of American once did. I have some smart friends at opposite ends of the political spectrum who, like me, understand this and are quite worried about it. But we seem to be a minority. There is such an anti-press bias in this country, some of it justified, but much of it based on personal political agenda, that few can see beyond this hatred of reporters and news organizations and understand what this country is losing.

You wrote, “Nevermind the hard earned money of many of those who serve each and every day with very little to no fanfare”. News is not the routine. News normally is not you doing the job your are paid or volunteer to do. I didn’t know you needed fanfare to do your job. In my little time in public safety and many years observing it, I was suspicious of those folks who needed that “fanfare”.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t extraordinary routine work or “good news” that shouldn’t be part of daily news coverage. While I am not into the daily ins and outs of the DC Fire and EMS Department any longer (though until June 2010 I had been for almost 30 years) I have seen enough comments by firefighters here and in other forums and news coverage (and lack thereof) to make a judgment that there is a philosophical change in the administration over how public information is handled. That may have an impact on getting the “good news” covered.

You wrote, “In other words, a directly inflamatory piece of journalism with little to no PERTINENT factual information. Maybe the professional journalist who wrote this piece, and the blogger who posted it should try waiting for the correct information to come along.”

I won’t argue that is one way to do it. But there was pertinent factual information, “‘Ambulance 6 was dispatched, and currently we’re looking into why Ambulance 29 was consequently dispatched to the emergency,’ Gerhart says.” In addition, the TV station cites sources saying there was a 15 minute delay. Does that provide all of the answers? Hell no.

But from my experience, in many cases you aren’t likely to get all of those answers unless you hold their feet to the fire. And I don’t just mean DC. But recent news coverage in DC is a good example. Look what happened with the recent swimming pool filling by Engine 30. I have little doubt that the administration of the DC fire & EMS Department knew what had happened by the time Andrea Noble called on that Monday about the incident that occcurred on Saturday. Certainly by Tuesday they did. But if you follow the non-availability, non-answers and partial answers over the first few days of coverage you will see it took constant coverage and eventually CNN doing the story to get a direct and clear answer about what happened and the department’s policy. I use this example now as a case study in my presentations.

In stories like the Ambulance 6 incident and the swimming pool case the DC Fire & EMS Department and any other fire department would do themselves very big favors by providing as much information as they possibly can on the initial story. The goal shoule be to try and get it behind them instead of dragging these things out.

While many leaders think they are helping themselves by saying things like “it’s a personnel matter and I can’t discuss it” or “I can neither confirm or deny that occurred” or “it’s under investigation” they are more often than not hurting themselves and their organization.

Thanks for your input and insight. I appreciate you taking the time to read the blog, no matter how misguided I am, and for putting your thoughts in writing.

Statter

Let me be clear that I didn’t say “OUC makes mistakes everday”. I did say they have a history. Many involving stories I covered when I was a reporter (up until a little more than two-years-ago).

Yes, I agree with you the Military Road issue was training, despite the fact the director at the time told us it was a software gltich that needed to be corrected. The people working these centers need to know more about their jurisdictions than what comes across the computer screen or at least know how to find that info (like picking up a phone and calling the local firehouse).

You must not have followed my suggestion to check the STATter911.com archives if you make a statement like, “The only incident I recall where OUC was wrong”.

How about the call taker who couldn’t think of one thing to tell a woman trapped on the top floor of her burning Northwest apartment building that she should do while waiting for firefighters to rescue her?

How about the day Metro called on the radio for a fire on the tracks at Farragut North when I was at a box alarm near the Capitol. Stopping at all lights and going the speed limit I made it to Farragut North before the box was set up and dispatched.

How about not knowing which building is which in the White House office building complex when a fire occurred?

This is NOT intended to blast OUC because I have no clue how well they operate these days. I am just going back to my original point that we shouldn’t make assumptions that there isn’t another story involved in the Ambulance 6 case.

And again, my intent is not to excuse or divert attention from any actions of that crew. I am just illustrating there can be multiple issues contributing to the same problem. But I will agree that, based on the reporting only, the scenario detailed for Ambulance 6 seems like a deliberate act compared to making a mistake assigning the wrong ambulance (if that happened).

Thanks for writing.

Statter