FLASHBACK 1991: The media execution of a news anchor 

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In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.

Title: Why Phil Fell
Author: John Harrington
Date: November 26, 1991

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Ed. Note: John Harrington worked as an Emmy award winning investigative reporter at KTVX Channel Four from May, 1983 to August, 1990. He worked with Phil Riesen and News Director John Edwards the entire time.

In October, Phil Riesen was heaved out the back door of his life's work like a gum wrapper tossed from a speeding car.

I'm not surprised.

Phil knows I'm writing this story. He didn't ask me to quote him, and he didn't ask me not to quote him.

Here's the only quote you need to sum up Phil's feelings. Riesen told me that, during his last five days of working at the station, KTVX New Director John Edwards never said one word to him.

"Not a single damn word," Phil said. "Not goodbye, not thanks, not go to hell. It was like I'd never worked there. Can you believe it?"

In fact, no news management person, according to every staffer I've spoken with, acknowledged that Phil had done one good thing for the company in nearly a decade.

And, yes, I called John Edwards and tore his ear off about this sorry episode. Edwards called the move a "business decision" and said that it was "nothing personal" between himself and Phil.

Was it only five years ago that Edwards and Riesen sat side-by-side in Judge Leonard Russon's courtroom while I was grilled on the witness stand by Bob Van Sciver?

He was defending ex-Salt Lake County Attorney Ted Cannon from an indictment that Cannon had falsely accused me of being a "major cocaine dealer" in an effort to disrupt my investigation of his office. It was pure hell for me, that trial.

Edwards and Riesen, the two guys who meant the most to me at that time of my career, were there telling the world that I and Channel Four were right, and we weren't interested in taking any bullshit lying down. Cannon went to jail after he was convicted by that jury.

Channel Four gained respect for sticking to its guns in one of the most controversial, prolonged, tough dogfights in the recent annals of Utah journalism. I remember looking down from that witness chair, tears in my eyes, and seeing those guys. It was a portrait of loyalty, of sticking it out through thick and thin. I loved them both for it and I was never more proud of where I worked and what I'd chosen for my life's work than that afternoon in what, is now, an eternity ago.

I love Channel Four—or what it used to be. The people I worked with were my family. My colleagues believed what I believed, that journalism was rooted in community service, and it was a rambling time of rousing argument, spirited typewriter throwing, rough language and togetherness. Even those of us who didn't get along always stood up for the station and what we were doing. That's what makes the reality of how Phil Riesen was treated so hard to accept.

I'd like to say Phil's case is isolated, but it's not. It was visible.

My rare, long and good friendship with him, a friendship born of stormy conflict (sadly, we weren't speaking when Phil suffered his aneurysm in February) and grudging respect, had been poisoned by the creeping cancer that led to Phil's shamefully-handled dismissal from KTVX. It was a dismissal that runs against the grain of the way human beings are supposed to live.

As journalism went south in the KTVX newsroom, so did our humanity. As we took sides against each other, driven by a divide-and-conquer management style looming above us, we tore apart our friendships. We had forgotten our loyalty. We had forgotten how to give a shit.

We had become, in fact, exactly what news management wanted us to be: robots so preoccupied with beating on each other we wouldn't notice how our shop was being run into the ground. The stress became unbearable and I drifted. I woke up one fine summer's day in 1990, went down to the station and quit.

Phil Riesen stayed behind and stood alone.

In 1983, when KTVX began to develop its reputation for hard-hitting news, Riesen was the pointman in an operation that began to pick up viewers on a long climb from rating oblivion. Little did he know that at the top of the first hill, there'd be a group of leeches with a spotlight and a plan.

They called themselves consultants. They told KTVX it was really in the entertainment business. They looked over the newscast and decided Phil Riesen needed a "star" to sit next to him. In came a co-anchor. In came gimmicks. Things got weird.

Thus, in the soon-to-be hateful spirit of consultant-controlled KTVX, did arise the line of thinking that led, ultimately, to the news execution of Phil Riesen. As in the case across the board in Utah's local television newsrooms, most of the blame for unwarranted news director behavior can be directly traced to the consultants.

Using the smoke and mirrors they pander, the consultants have made news directors believe they are more than editors-in-chief. They have made them believe they are "executives" presiding over a collection of "talent." This crazed Hollywood approach has made simple newsmen and newswomen start "doing lunch," instead of stuffing a take-out burger on the fly.

When our local network affiliates started listening to these consultant outsiders telling them what people in this part of the country want to see on the news, a great broadcast market embarked on its current slide toward viewer oblivion.

According to a senior staffer still working inside KSL News, the consultant cancer has spread across the board in Utah television news.

"You won't believe the stuff we're doing," he told me the other day. "Believe it or not, when we lost (Spence) Kinard to that shit (his alleged relationship with ex-reporter Jennifer Howe), we lost our only buffer between us and the (LDS) Church"—and the consultants.

The staffer said the types of stories aired and the lack of real news coverage was "a joke."

Meanwhile, at KTVX, Edwards had long since thrown in with the consultants. Armed with their misguided information, he went on a binge in the newsroom in the quest for "better numbers (ratings)."

Edwards changed from a journalist's delight as a boss, to a manager short on praise for the people who would have literally died for him. He would slash his way around the place armed with "research" compiled from "focus groups" that apparently gave him the justification to raise himself above the avocation of journalism.

Big mistake.

When John Edwards imitated the news directors of KSL (then Kinard) and KUTV (too many news directors to directly blame for destroying that proud heritage), he did it big. The evidence showed up when staffers began leaving in droves: Karen Carnes. Mike Watkiss. Alyson Heyrend. Thom Dillon. Julie Levine. Russ Behrman. Lisa Balick. Steve McQuinn. Myself, and many more photographers, editors, reporters, and other staff.

The exodus continues: Award-winning reporter Sheila Hamilton departs for Portland December 20.

Following the Riesen dismissal, she told me she would "do anything in the world, anything, to get out of there." Her reason: "Abuse. You just can't believe the place. You can't believe what they did to Phil. It's the worst thing I've ever seen," she said at a party at Green Street arranged for Phil by Hamilton and producer Kathy Torina.

"It shouldn't surprise Phil," Alyson Heyrend told me at the Green Street party. "They did it to me," she said. "That place has no idea what it's doing or what it's done to any of us."

Departed anchor Karen Carnes told me in Phoenix as far back as three years ago that "Edwards and KTVX don't give a shit about news. Or people. Edwards spent two years trying to pit me against Phil."

She said she left town feeling used and like she'd "been made a fool."

It seems that what Edwards and others in his position really care about is a misleading numbers game you know as "ratings." Even though advertising pays the bills, the product they're trying to sell is journalism, nothing more, nothing less. With consultants calling the shots, however, the product you get is anything but journalism.

That has the three local news stations going in the wrong direction: down.

With fiber-optic cable television that will carry thousands of channels looming on the horizon, telephone-company controlled television is a couple of years away from forever wiping out over-the-air broadcasting. And instead of trying to carve out a lasting market with real, useful, and hard-edged news information, the locals continue to bombard viewers with consultant gimmicks.

At KTVX, it's "For Kid's Sake," a contrived segment designed to get the female anchor "seen" and "involved" in the community. Unfortunately, the talented, bright Kimberly Perkins is the current victim of "For Kid's Sake," the same segment that helped lead Karen Carnes to flee town.

Meanwhile, KSL and KUTV are currently kicking in with the bogus "24 Hour News" concept.

The around-the-clock "news" actually is a set-up for special breaks to sell commercials while a recognizable anchor like Michelle King spews a snippet of old wire-copy or alludes in the most superficial way to some non-story due up at 10 p.m.

It's all a consultant con-game to trick viewers into thinking "they're covered," when, in fact, they're not. And, the hard-edged stuff bites the dust.

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Riesen cut his teeth on the hard-edged stuff. When KTVX climbed out of the basement in the mid-1980s, Riesen delivered the news solo. He didn't go for pretty, he wasn't "a star." He simply delivered the emerging KTVX go-for-the-jugular style like the pro he is.

He is a Utah man who cares about Utah issues. His Sunday morning interview show, "Utah 1991 (which was also Utah 1988, Utah 1989, Utah 1990)," dug into the fabric of Great Basin life. "I've always chosen to live here," he said, "and I don't intend to leave.

"I'm a Utahn. Glenda (Phil's wife) and I raised our family here. We'll die here."

Which makes his departure from KTVX, or more specifically, the way his departure from KTVX was orchestrated and handled, all the more difficult for Riesen to take. Riesen said he's the latest victim in the ongoing "targeting" of staff conducted by News Director Edwards.

For years, Edwards and Riesen battled over differences in what went on the air, and they developed a conflict that tore the newsroom apart. Edwards freely admits that he and Riesen did not get along. KTVX Executive Producer Ken Connaughton referred to Riesen as "a worthless piece of shit" to any staffer who'd listen.

"John worked on me for years," Phil said. "I felt compelled to come back from (brain aneurysm) surgery early so I could get ready for a big research project they were going to do on me in September," Riesen told me.

"I got in there way too soon and my doctor told me I would kill myself. I told him I had to do it."

Then, days before the research was to commence, Riesen said Edwards called him into his office and announced the station wasn't going through with the Riesen research. The project was to be a key element in the renewal of Phil's upcoming contract.

"That's when I really began to understand what they were trying to do, which was Edwards trying to get me fired," Phil said.

Edwards says that "he (Riesen) didn't show up well in the research" and that viewer reaction to Phil was that he was "too heavy (too serious)." But the latest research on Riesen was cancelled, and Edwards did not talk specifically about which research was used.

[Ed. Note: Riesen is currently leading in the Private Eye Best of Utah readers' poll as "Best News Anchor."]

"There was really no better way to handle it (Phil's firing), because it was going to be a bad situation no matter what," he said.

Riesen told the station that the tension was "killing" him. "I asked them to make some decisions," Phil said, "now they're telling people I asked them to hurry up and get rid of me."

It took Phil Riesen's near-death last February to bring me full circle. The hateful atmosphere inside the KTVX newsroom had even put me and Phil at each other's throats, as I've written.

When I quit, I once again found those things and people that mean the most. Riesen is one.

When Phil was ill, I went back in my heart to those days when a good story and lots of laughs carried us all as a team, while we floundered in obscurity at the bottom of the ratings heap. Riesen fit the no-star mold. No fluff, no jokes, no junk, just news.

We gained our viewers at KTVX by digging, fighting, always telling the truth and taking on all comers. But the creeping cancer in the newsroom destroyed it all. It drove away a talented staff of hard-working people who are now benefiting stations across the country. It washed away decades of combined experience and replaced it with the hollow nonsense thought up in some consultant's office.

Ultimately, Riesen, the man who resisted it the most, was the final victim. He'll continue to tend his meticulous garden behind his modest Holladay home, outwardly complaining about his treatment to no one.

As for Edwards, who knows.

Whenever I got in the soup with another slugfest of an investigative story, Edwards loved it, proving that underneath all the hype, tension, newsroom fights and consultant-itis, there was still a newsman.

Now, it's too late.