Sailing to Arcadia
Deborah Howell, ombudsman for the Washington Post, writes about what makes a good reporter:
Good reporters are the heart of news gathering. If it’s news, they have to know it. Without them, the public wouldn’t have the news and information essential to running a democracy — or our lives. Whether the story is local, national or foreign, it has to be gathered on the ground by a reporter.
This is romanticism. But journalists have been prone to seeing themselves and their mission in such terms for much of the last 100 years. I’m not sure it’s a good thing to speak about journalists this way. What does it say about reporters and editors, then, when they fail to live up to this ideal? And it’s for sure they fail sometimes. Upon such failure do we hear the kind of contrition that we might expect to follow from what amounts to letting down an “essential” component of our democracy — our very lives even?
The romanticism continues:
Retired Post executive editor Ben Bradlee thinks a reporter’s most important quality is energy: “They’ve got to love what they’re doing; they’ve got to be serious about turning over rocks, opening doors. The story drives you. It’s part of your soul.”
So why do news organizations work so hard to crush the souls of their reporters with shrinking budgets (caused mainly by obscene profit margins), Draconian layoffs, faster and faster deadlines, and a constant parade of faddish band aids for the whole sorry mess?
But not to worry. A good reporter is able to overcome such things and patiently, doggedly uncover the story:
Bob Woodward, The Post’s most renowned reporter, believes that good reporters do not let speed and impatience hinder them. They have the discipline to go to multiple sources at all levels of a story and get meticulous documentation — notes, calendars, memos. “You go down lots of holes that don’t lead anywhere,” but “in the end, what always matters is information that is authentic and can be analyzed and documented.”
The reward, of course, is in doing one’s duty to journalism’s primary purpose — even at a cost to one’s personal life. This sounds like a movie treatment:
A reporter’s first commitment is getting the story for readers; it trumps almost everything. That’s the reason they sometimes miss their wedding anniversaries or their children’s birthday parties and keep on reporting until they are wheeled into surgery (see Shadid) or delivery rooms.
Reporting is a calling. If reporters didn’t have it (along with good editors), how would you know what was going on in your communities, the nation and the world?
Is this a (sick) joke?
I ask that question because I want to believe all this romantic nonsense (except the absurd part about how only journalists know what’s going on in the world — geez). But when you look at the working conditions under which most news is produced, it’s a wonder anything good at all comes from it.
On top of everything else, Howell lays what amounts to a guilt trip on America’s reporters.
Let me suggest another focus for this column: A good reporter is a person who acts as a custodian of facts and operates with a discipline of verification despite working for news organizations that, as profit making businesses, all too often fail the primary purpose of journalism. A good reporter doesn’t let the MSM news organization strangle his good work and then sit on his ethical shoulders to take the credit for it. He finds a job in the new media instead.
Well said, Andy.
I agree with Howell that courage and curiosity are important characteristics for a journalist. I thought it was interesting to empathy on the list. Empathy plays an under-theorized role in reporting and is missing from the structural biases.
What was also interesting was some of the rhetoric and what was missing.
For example, the principle of storytelling in journalism. “Good reporters are committed to telling the story.” I always like to ask journalists what they mean by “the” “story” and how they construct a narrative:
What is missing is a desire/ability to transform data/information into knowledge/understanding, unless that’s implied by storytelling. Usually, reporting is described as data/information and knowledge/understanding is left to the reader.
What is also missing is the role of journalistic ethics and peer responsibility for their craft.
Tim… I like that idea of peer responsibility. And, yes, I agree re: courage and curiosity.
Journalists are Economical
Tim… Yeah, interesting stuff. It would be cool to see how closely rational choice theory maps to the structural bias theory.
I’d bet they’re close. I thought the end of the article started to get to how the new noetic field changes the epistemological/structural/economic biases:
Tim. Exactly. And I bet the fit would be close. Hmmmm… something more to look into
This matter of the romanticism of journalism touches on another matter.
Consider the following analysis of recent events in Mumbai, in an article at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7753603.stm
The article concludes:
It is tempting to label the attackers as “crazies”. But such a dismissive appellation may be misplaced.
It is more than likely that the masterminds are seasoned operatives and that the foot-soldiers, young as they may have been, had undergone rigorous training for months, perhaps years.
The attacks also show every sign of having been designed to maximise media attention on a global scale.
In other words, there is a method to the madness.”
The author of the article is not a journalist, but the allusion to use of world media as an indication of terrorists’ sophistication
reminds me of similar statements made, bizarrely enough, by journalists themselves. eg during the first gulf war both CNN and BBC live feeds would mention Sadam’s ’sophisticated’ use of staged media events as a propaganda device.
What is the news media doing in such cases? Are they admitting they are pawns? Are they NOT admitting that the media has in many instances become an integral component of the events they claim to be reporting on as objective, uninvolved outside observers?
An important question here concerns whether allusions to a romanticized image of reporters is in fact a rhetorical device to justify (i.e., hide) the role that reporters and the media are in fact enacting in the events they report.
Mike… re: rhetorical device to justify…
That’s what I think. And I would answer “yes” to the second and third questions you pose in the penultimate paragraph.
Journalism is a remarkably un-self-reflective practice. It’s true that journalists fuss over craft and, to a certain extent, ethics. But, for the most part, they accept this romantic vision of their purpose that is, to a great extent, mythology.
We need better media criticism.
An interesting (if flawed) book I’m reading now — The Big Picture: Why Democracies Need Journalistic excellence — makes the argument that university schools (and programs) of journalism must become centers of media criticism.
Andy, re your
> …makes the argument that university schools (and programs) of journalism must become centers of media criticism
- a while back I ran across an essay (from Columbia? somehow related to, or quoting, Halberstam?) making this point; but haven’t been able to find it again. Do you recall it by any chance?
Anna… I do not. But I’ll look into it.