Tragedy and a double standard in coverage
A local Ottawa story struck an interesting chord with me this week when the Ottawa Citizen reported on a missing person. The person in question happened to be the husband of a local CTV news anchor. The story became a top of the broadcast piece Friday for the local CBC affiliate, a CTV competitor.
However, CTV didn’t report the story the same way as the Citizen or CBC. When CTV first reported on the missing man, it left out the connection to their anchor. Why? The general manager told the Citizen it did so “‘out of respect for her wishes’ after police issued a media release.”
“She asked us yesterday (Thursday) to leave the connection out, and she asked police to leave the connection out. But first and foremost the consideration was that the attention should be focused on nothing more than the search for Greg and for his missing vehicle, so that as quickly as possible the family could be reunited.”
Source: The Ottawa Citizen, CTV Ottawa anchor surrounded by support as police seek missing husband
A day later, CTV made the connection in its story.
Judging by the outpouring of support on the CTV News website, I think everyone can agree that we hope there is a happy end to this story. I hope there is.
However, the way CTV Ottawa handled the story reminded me of a similar situation in a newsroom I was once in.
One night, we got word of a fatal car crash. The deceased was a sibling of a senior editor, who was obviously not going to make it in that tragic night. After a confab in the middle of the newsroom involving every editor and reporter, it was decided to write the story up as a brief because the police had issued a release with the name of the victim made public. Normally, we would have gone to the victim’s home, knocked on the family’s door, done a “pickup” where we asked for a picture of the deceased, and then talked to the family hours after the tragedy to garner a brief bio of the deceased to put in the paper the next day. In this case, it was decided to give the family some space because we knew who they were.
The decision did not sit well with everyone, me included.
It was the double-standard that I didn’t like, a double standard that the missing person story raised again this week.
The Canadian Association of Journalists ethical guidelines is a good place to start. It says that when reporting on any story, a journalist or organization should “not allow our own biases to impede fair and accurate reporting.” The CBC has a similar line in its ethical guidelines. CBC/Radio-Canada reporters are to keep in mind that “public interest guides all our decisions.” As well, the CBC lays out to its reporters that it is to treat everyone fairly. Why? “The trust of the public is our most valued asset. We avoid putting ourselves in real or potential conflict of interest. This is essential to our credibility.”
The New York Times in its ethical guidelines has a similar statement that lays out exactly how it sees covering any story:
Companywide, our goal is to cover the news impartially and to treat readers, news sources, advertisers and all parts of our society fairly and openly, and to be seen as doing so. The reputation of our company rests upon that perception, and so do the professional reputations of its staff members. Thus the company, its separate business units and members of its newsrooms and editorial pages share an interest in avoiding conflicts of interest or any appearance of conflict.
That appearance of conflict is, possibly, even worse than having a conflict of interest. Granting someone privacy during a moment of grief is not a conflict of interest. Consider what The Toronto Star says in its reporting guidelines about covering grief and tragedy:
Conflicts between the public’s right to know and the expectation of privacy of individuals are inevitable in the gathering and publishing of news, but common sense, our duty to inform and compassion should govern our judgment.
[...]
Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to be informed.
Reporting the connection between a deceased and a member of a news organization covering the story, I think, is a way to avoid a conflict of interest or the hint of impartiality. You need not trample on their privacy, but if you do it for one, you should do it for all. That was the lesson I learned years ago after that confab and had reinforced this week.
Just a quick glance online suggests that there are few newsrooms that have a specific section in their guidelines on journalistic practices that deals with reporting on our own. Rather, guidelines on personal or familial connections largely have to do with connections to political parties or organizations that are the subject of coverage.
Guidelines for reporting on a story involving a journalist from the same outlet is something newsrooms should consider putting down on paper (as antiquated an idea as that sounds in today’s digital world). If not, then newsrooms should fall back on what already guides our journalistic judgment: We treat everyone fairly, we treat everyone the same, because to do otherwise not only brings into question the transparency and accountability of our news stories, but the profession as a whole.
Stewart and Colbert viewers are “deep”, study suggests
“If you watch the news and don’t like it, then this is your counter program to the news.”
Jon Stewart along with Stephen Colbert have become cultural icons for many young news consumers who spurn traditional media in favour of, well, fake news programs. While many, including myself, watch Stewart and Colbert for a good laugh, they also watch it for a “deeper level of processing,” according to a new study. In other words, they want to think more rather than think less when they watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
The study from the University of Delaware found that university-aged viewers wanted to watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report for context as opposed to information or a good chuckle. The university’s website quoted lead researcher Dannagal Young, an assistant professor of communications, as saying that such viewers show a high need for cognition, or a need to have deeper thinking processes to analyze arguments and ideas, and problems and their potential solutions.
“We know that the reasons people seek out information strongly affect the implications of those messages,” Young says. “In this case, people coming to the show looking for satirical analysis of political information may exhibit more long-lasting shifts in attitude.”
Interestingly, that finding parallels a 2008 study that found that people used fake news shows to update their impressions of political candidates and personalities. The study suggested people take this information and then add it to the running score they kept on a candidate, a scoreboard system that is one way citizens make political and voting decisions. On the other hand, the study found that people who watched news shows, such as those on CNN, were prompted to learn more about candidates, issues and procedures.
“We don’t consider ourselves equal opportunity anythings, because that’s not – you know, that’s the beauty of fake journalism. We don’t have to – we travel in fake ethics.”
- Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart has repeatedly said that he is not a journalist, nor is his show a source of journalism. It is political satire and social commentary — context for what happens politically in the United States and around the world. It may be that context that drives viewers to his and Colbert’s program. One theory is that the reason people watched the Daily Show and the Colbert Report is because both shows focus on just a few stories each show and then have an in-depth interview — a format harkening back to an earlier era of broadcast news — rather than quickly scanning through a number of stories in a 30-minute or one-hour newscast. Young news consumers are interested in more context in news stories and avoid “above the fold” scanning. The Daily Show provides that context and, apparently, a deeper cognitive experience. Just more reason to watch them daily.
Top stories of 2011: Depends who you ask
Okay, okay, I know I should start a blog post with something more unique than an old newsroom cliché, but I think it works well here. (If you think otherwise, just let me know.) The adage goes something like this: Dog bites man? That’s not news. Man bites dog? That’s front page.
Moral of the story? What’s unique — sometimes what’s unique to the newsroom members — is what is considered news. Secondary moral? What is news is largely a subjective decision because what I find newsworthy you may not and vice versa. You can see this on a daily basis online through a completely unscientific comparison of the most prominent stories on a news website compared to the ones highlighted under the most read list. You can also see it at the end of a year when newsroom put out their top stories of the year lists, and compare the newsroom selected stories against those of the readers. I did this with the lists developed at Postmedia, where I work, which are based on polling of Canadians and an unscientific poll of top editors across the chain. I also took a look at the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s studies about the stories that captured the greatest percentages of the annual newshole versus the top stories the public followed.
For the most part, there is much agreement about the top stories of the year, which shows that newsrooms and readers appear to be in sync about what is news. The economy, for instance, was of major concern to news consumers in the Pew study, and so too was it important to newsrooms.
But there were also diversions. The Pew study pointed out that readers wanted to know more about rising gas prices, there was very little coverage of it in the American press. And while the News of the World phone hacking scandal attracted media attention, relatively few Americans were interested in what was happening across the ocean. At Postmedia, the biggest story of the year internationally for editors was the Arab Spring, while readers chose the death of Osama bin Laden.
So how is it that what news consumers felt were the biggest stories of the year didn’t completely jive with what Postmedia editors selected as their top stories?
I have two theories.
The first is that the public may be seeing the impact of one story, rather than the impact of an ongoing narrative. The death of bin Laden ended a narrative that began 10 years earlier on Sept. 11, 2001, while the Arab Spring started a narrative that has included the toppling of dictators, continues to evolve and unfold. It may also be the narrative’s proximity and impact on the news consumer that makes bin Laden stick out more than the Arab Spring. By proximity and impact I mean the proximity of the 9/11 attacks to American and North American cities and the resulting impact on Western society. Those two news drivers make the killing of bin Laden more newsworthy, in a sense, than the Arab Spring, which is an ocean and a bit away from the average North American news consumer.
The second thought I have is that news consumers may only be reading the headlines and keeping a tally of the most recent stories they have seen. Research has shown that viewers don’t perfectly remember every story they watch in a news broadcast, nor do they have perfect recollections of the news stories they consume in print. They may not remember the ongoing headlines about the protests in Egypt or the demonstrations in Tunisia that were at the forefront of news coverage over the spring and summer when the Arab Spring began. They may not have gone “below the fold” and read more than just the top headlines of the day — as a 2008 Associated Press study showed — when the Arab Spring moved from front page to inside news. Newsroom editors may have constantly been handling copy about the Arab Spring, and therefore had if forefront in their minds.
Does that mean newsrooms are wrong in their choice of stories? No, but what it means is that newsrooms need to be in tune with their news consumers, avoid blind spots in coverage and ensure that the stories people want to read about get as much coverage as the stories they need to read about. That involves interacting with news consumers, maybe bringing in a member of the public now and again to serve as an honorary editor for a week or opening up news meetings to the public either in person or streaming them online. It means interacting with them on social media to see what stories they want to see covered. And it means having a diverse newsroom with a number of viewpoints to question the stories being assigned and propose others that may not be on the newsroom radar. That sounds like a lot to ask for, but I think just a few ideas such as these, which newsrooms have already adopted, spread across the entire news sector can make for a better news relationship in 2012.
Plagiarism as a disease?
I have one rule about plagiarism: Just don’t do it. And for those journalists who do get caught plagiarizing or fabricating stories, I have little or no sympathy for them.
That’s why this essay in The Fix by Quentin Rowan about his history of plagiarism is really interesting. He likens his propensity for copying and pasting the words of others into his own texts to an addict. As a recovering alcoholic, Rowan compares his need to drink to his need to be the best writer.
Before I knew this was a disease, I saw myself purely as a screw-up. Morally weak. Perhaps one day plagiarism will be seen, if not as a disease, at least as something pathological.
I find only one major flaw with this: I don’t think plagiarizing journalists are all addicts of stealing the words of another. I think it has more to do with an inability to accept failure — the ability to say to a newsroom manager, “I couldn’t get the story.” Failure isn’t one of those things newsrooms take well, but there are enough editors and producers who know that reporters do their best, and even the best of reporters can’t land every story. Failure is part of the job and the best journalists allow room for failure. The ones who can’t handle failure, and turn to plagiarism to avoid it, are the ones that I don’t want in a newsroom.
Plagiarism may be a disease for some — just as the urge to steal is a disease deemed kleptomania — but it is not a disease for all.
Have a read of the article and make up your own mind.
