“Get out of my shot!”
TV reporters have been screaming these words for years. They occur when civilians thrust themselves uninvited into a live broadcast.
Most people who go there don’t take offense — trust me on this, because I’ve been there — and they usually bow out of the shot sans a fuss. The sharp words are, as they say, just another day at the office in this profession. They’re not something that should land you in serious trouble — unless, that is, you do your reporting at the New York Stock Exchange, where uttering that phrase could literally get you fired.
That’s what happened to John Terrett, a 50-year veteran broadcaster, whose accomplishments include riveting minute-by-minute coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks for the BBC.
For the past eight years, Terrett has been reporting for the US subsidiary of Beijing-based CGTN News, covering markets and the US economy. He does so from the NYSE floor.
That is, until this past Monday, after NYSE officials complained to his bosses on the mainland that Terrett had the cojones to tell someone — an NYSE employee, it turned out — to get out of his shot and do so fast.
Again, such dustups are common, which the NYSE should fully understand, since TV is kind of what it does these days. Not a lot of trading occurs on its iconic floor at the headquarters on the corner of Wall and Broad streets in Lower Manhattan. Traders have been replaced by computers — and TV reporters. News organizations spice up their coverage of the markets with the NYSE’s mostly faux atmospherics.
That’s why I thought the firing was very strange when the news came across my desk. So I asked the NYSE for an explanation, as I did CGTN. Both declined to comment.
Terrett gave me his version. A couple of weeks ago while doing a live hit on the floor, he noticed an NYSE exec giving a tour and about 20 people crowded into his shot while he was on air. He got angry — again I’ve been there and this is no fun for the reporter or viewer — so he told them to move along.
That was supposed to be that.
But it wasn’t. Apparently the NYSE dude wasn’t pleased with Terrett’s reaction. His bosses wrote Terrett’s supervisors at CGTN that he did something naughty and it might result in the network losing its floor studio privileges.
Earlier this week, that’s exactly what happened. Terrett was fired for cause, he tells me, after he learned CGTN had its floor contract terminated.
Full disclosure: I know Terrett; his daughter is my producer at Fox Business. Could he be a bit prickly? Yeah — and so can I and the rest of the reporting profession, particularly when someone is interrupting your live hits. Was this the first time he told someone in strident terms to get out of his way? Of course not.
Another full disclosure: It’s been my experience that the people who run the famed NYSE (now owned by the Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange) are a weirdly domineering bunch.
They seek to control every bit of what little news goes on down there and can be bullies about it. I remember when they literally pushed aside a Fox Business reporter on the floor for asking a CEO a question during the listing of a tech company.
Yes, they can be jerks, though part of me understands the paranoia. The so-called Big Board, once the epicenter of capitalism, is so borderline irrelevant these days that it is owned by a computer company in Atlanta, which is basically what the Intercontinental Exchange is.
With physical trading of stocks going the way of the buggy whip, the NYSE itself is mostly computerized. The main reason its building hasn’t been turned into condos like the rest of downtown Manhattan is because it’s been retrofitted as one of the country’s largest TV studios.
But the place is still pretty profitable. So maybe the computer geeks who run the exchange can spend a little money on sensitivity training the next time they’re thinking of beating up a reporter for doing his job.
