Headroom
Short blog post today, as I’m still battling a migraine. Just one day after hitting Inception with Motto and Kimmy. Coincidence?
Well, yes.
I’ve got a lot to say on the movie, but I’ll probably leave that for a weekend post. The Cliff notes: I enjoyed the vast majority of it. And it inspired me to write an idea that’s been sloshing around in the old decanter. That’s always a plus in my books.
But, rather than pressure building up because of excess inspiration, the headache is probably because I spent the day in the sun with my mic and recorder, talking with people at the Capital Ex parade. Meaning that my job was to go to the parade and talk to happy strangers about how happy they were. And then go back to the office to play with the sound.
So, I’m basically saying I think I won the day.
Anyway, I’m not in the mood for serious thoughts, so I’ll let Aly Thomson do the heavy lifting for me. She’s one of bright stars of my J-school class, and she’s keeping Halifax honest.
“A man who identified himself as Orville answered the door at Lund’s Tantallon home on Mon day afternoon — the property, assessed at $506,300, is regis tered to Lund and Orville McGil livray — and told a reporter that the councillor was sleeping. An hour later, the man said Lund wouldn’t be commenting on the advice of his lawyer.”
I have trouble seeing the need of including Lund’s property value. Moreover, I have trouble seeing the benefit in pointing out that Lund lives with a man. Remind me how these things relate to drinking and driving?
Oh yeah, Lund is a total alcoholic so he must be gay and rich. People love it when you lose, they love Dirty Laundry.
Now, I’m not with Aly 100% on this being a deliberate hit-job. I’m not sure the writer of the piece went out of the way to harm Lund’s reputation. But if fits in nicely with a conversation that Jeff Samsonow and I had the other day about journalistic bias. I think the vast majority of journalists really want to get out there and report the story perfectly objectively. And the vast majority of us will fail.
That’s because that journalists aren’t just reciters of facts – anyone who says otherwise is wrong, and is doing a huge disservice to the profession. If we just wrote facts, every story would be a bullet list of times, dates, people and quotes.
Instead, journos do research. We do interviews. We craft stories and supply narritives. And we do it all with limited space and limited time. So, the mere act of choosing who and who not to interview, what to include and what angle to chase a story from: these are all where bias rears it’s head.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying journalists have license to write one-sided stories. Just that we should be aware that no human being is ever going write something that is 100% objective all of the time. News consumers should be aware of this too.
There are, of course, ways to minimize the impact of this bias. Some have been around forever: like encouraging journalists to report accurately, fairly and to have the open mind needed to approach a story from an angle that might not come naturally to them. As well, people would be well-served to get their news from a variety of sources and in a bunch of different mediums.
This is made easier by the Web. And the web also gives us some bias-busting techniques that we didn’t have before. I look forward to the time when media agencies make use of the limitless space on the Internet to post full interviews – whether they be typed transcripts, or just the raw audio of a talk with a subject. Write your story, get it out there, but also give your audience the chance to look through your research and decide for themselves what the message is, and what is important. That, in my mind, is a better service to your readers than trying to jam a video camera in a print reporter’s hands in a desperate bid to be web-savvy.
Also, media companies should encourage journalists to dive in to the comment sections of the website and interact with readers. Let them ask questions about why they talked to this person over that one, or why they thought that quote was the right one to express the subject’s feelings. It sounds like extra work for an over-worked profession, but I don’t know many journos who wouldn’t welcome a chance to engage with their readers that way. We didn’t get in to this line of work for stable hours, good pay or job security. We did it because we think it is important to inform people. (Also, some of us don’t have any other marketable skills.) So, give us the chance.
But, I’ve lost sight of my original point, which had something to do about not writing a post today. Good job on that one. In closing: I love me some Aly Thomson, and she’ll be up on the blog roll as soon as I update it. Read her.
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