So why are journalists “always ignorant of the things they’re writing about”? Why do people who happen to be experts on a particular subject so frequently say that “journalists always get it wrong when they write/talk about XXX.” ?
The short answer is because very few news agency journalists are, or are allowed to be, specialists.
And news agency reports, mostly not re-written by the end user, form the vast majority of the news as reported to the public. This is less so in British national newspapers, and the better end (the “quality press”) in much of Europe, which have (or had) the resources to have a lot of their own staff at home and abroad.
But it is especially true in the United States. There, the vast majority of newspapers, and radio new bulletins, are simply put together with news straight from the wires, mainly of the Associated Press, covering state, national and international news, rarely re-written at all, plus sometimes items from the newswires of the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, etc. .There are many very fine local US newspapers, but that’s the way they work. They have small staffs, relative to European national newspapers.
That system allows their staff to concentrate on very local events and politics, write local features and columns, and do investigative work, much of it exceptional. The Chicago Tribune’s John Crewdson single-handedly exposed the scandal of the supposed US discovery of the AIDS virus, which he showed had been snatched from the French Pasteur Institute discoverers.
I really became conscious of this when helping in the AP coverage of a US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in upstate New York, staying in a hotel at Ithica, only 20 miles away. I remarked to my colleague my surprise at seeing one of my routine stories in the Ithica newspaper. “They pay for the AP, why would they bother to send someone to cover it,” he said.
Agency journalists in the office normally handle several totally different stories each day, mainly from local news sources. So the hack in New Delhi, for example, might have stories about a lost tourist, new economic data, a polticial row with China, and the death of “the world’s oldest language” come across his desk in one shift. He simply can’t be an expert in all of the endless possible stories.
And he or she may be required to suddenly rush to cover a story in a different country they know little about.
You simply have to use your common sense and what little background knowledge you may have. My saying has always been that as an agency journalist, “you’re an expert in three days or 10 years.”
That happened to me when I had to cover the second World AIDS Congress in Paris in 1986. I had done some reporting on AIDS because the French were the world leaders then, but normally had time to bounce the stories off our science specialist in New York – I think the AP had a total of two worldwide at the time – before the stories went public.
Now I was faced with a conference with 900 papers presented and 2000 delegates attending, and in a competitive situation, with no time for a New York check. You just have to throw yourself on the mercy of the nicest delegates you can find and ask “What’s new? What should I be looking out for ?” I was lucky that delegates were extremely understanding and wanted to help so that the stories were as accurate as possible. It is not always thus.
What you write is true and fair. I would also add that we routinely chastise translations in news pieces and forget that it was some guy, sitting bleary-eyed in the office at 2 am, trying to render a bit of slangy chat into comprehensible English.
I think the agencies and foreign bureaus — where they still exist! — do a pretty good job. I understand why local newspapers don’t always do a good job, but I still think they should be ashamed of themselves. I also understand why print media send some well-known journalist to do a story in a foreign country — people will buy the edition to read him or her — but those are almost universally dreadful. Their ‘fresh’ view is almost always stupid and wrong.
I think the worst are tv news readers. Sometimes a story isn’t bad — the producer and reporter did some work — but the news room chatter ruins it, sensationalizes it, and is sometimes so stupid it makes me teeth hurt. They may look good and be to read teleprompters, but either they are left to improvise when they shouldn’t, or the studio producer is off drinking coffee all day.
I dunno; I think the pressure of 24/7 news, having to pull in the numbers, and facing increasingly more complicated stories is producing worse and worse quality. I’ve been trying to follow the health care bill debate in the US, and the reporting is just awful. It is so obvious what I want to know: what are the provisions in the bill, how will it work, what will change, what will stay the same? Not even the New York Times is delivering it. It’s all about the politics of it, not the substance.
Sorry. Rambled.
Not rambling, mab, sound observations. I haven’t addressed those issues. I particularly agree on the health debat. Here in the UK I simply couldn’t get a clear understanding of the issues. Possibly, I admit, because the issues have been distorted so much by the ranting in the US.
I’m not quaified to look behind the scenes of TV news – what I know is 20 years or more old, before 24/7 news.
And I didn’t discuss the tabloid end of the business, because in many ways I think it is beneath comment….
I’ve been trying to follow the health care bill debate in the US, and the reporting is just awful. It is so obvious what I want to know: what are the provisions in the bill, how will it work, what will change, what will stay the same? Not even the New York Times is delivering it.
You can find the official text of all bills introduced to congress at Thomas, the online official government section of the Library of Congress.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200:
Govtrack is a private website that also publishes the texts of bills.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-3200
Sometimes if you are tracking a bill and wish the most current information (like results of votes, who voted yes and no, which amendments have been voted up or down), they have it before anyone else, the same day. LOC can take overnight to update bill status.
Other websites also have specific information. For example, this website
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/show
tells you H.R. 3200 that was being debated last fall is obsolete and gives numbers and links for the new bill H.R. 3962.
I wondered if I should put all three links in the same comment; it looks like it put the comment in the moderation queue.
It did, who knows why? Anti-spam I presume.
Thanks for the links Nijma, but the problem for us outside the US is not the official details of the bills or the votes, it is understanding what they actually will (or would) do, in simple terms. I’m sure we could find that somewhere if we looked hard enough – you have much more important things to do than guide us through that maze, I’m sure.
Moderation:
You can set it up for what you want, but two links is usually the default.
Health care legislation:
National Public Radio has been following the issue.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120068329
That NPR site is excellent. Among other things it explains “public option”, a term which was being thrown around freely but no one ever explained. Thanks, Nijma.
Thanks, Nij, but actually you just kind of proved my point. Other than NPR, the media isn’t doing its job, which is to present the facts of life-changing, key, landmark (add more superlatives and stir) legislation in clear terms, describe the debate, and possibly provide views on what this means. We shouldn’t have to go and read the original legislation. Or rather, it’s great that we can, but I’d like some media help, please. This weekend I watched the CNN Sunday shows (I just got cable and occassionally stray from Animal Planet 24/7). The coverage was all about the politics of an issue, not the issue itself. That is, they didn’t have people for and against “don’t ask, don’t tell.” They didn’t do a piece on “what people in the military think about this.” Or a piece of the history of discrimination in the military. It was all about “will the Republicans let this through.” What form will their attack on it take? Has the White House played this right? It was kind of surrealistic. And it was absolutely useless to say, someone who didn’t really have an opinion on the issue and wanted facts (how many gay people in the military? gay heroes? etc), a sense of who is for and against and why.
Try this NYT page:
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/
The media probably thinks “doing its job” consists of making money for its shareholders so it doesn’t go bankrupt.
A few years ago there was also some legislation passed to allow more monopolistic ownership of media; then conglomerates like the right-wing Clear Channel bought up stations. Seriously, if you don’t want to read the legislation yourself, who would you trust to read it for you. There is very little news reporting these days, and much use made of pundits who have a political ax to grind. It sells. The traditional evening news programs used to be a financial loss, but the stations considered the programs necessary to running a TV station. These days, NPR is the only news source not owned by someone who has a dog in the race, and even they have come under fire to include more conservative viewpoints since they do take a small amount of public funds.