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Image credit: Flat Earth News by Scleroplex on Flickr

I’ve been listening to the City University’s massively informative series of talks from the Centre for Investigative Journalism, and you should too. I liked Nick Davies’ talk so much, that I decided to paraphrase/transcribe some of it, and added some of my own thoughts.

Don’t bother reading all the newspapers, watching all the TV news shows, listening to all the radio broadcasts.

Why? Because if you’re constantly listening to everyone else to find your news, and all everyone else is doing is constantly listening to everyone else to find their news, then you get a shallow echo chamber where everyone is reporting the same small set of stories and everyone reports on the small small set of stories in the same manner.

Objectivity sucks

Davies cites Martin Bell’s reporting of the war in former Yugoslavia. Some stories have such an inherent emotional content that you are distorting the story if you don’t express it deliberately and overtly. In this war, one side was literally raping the other. If you stand there and coldly report the story while people are being raped and pillaged, you’re distorting what’s happening. It is utterly impossible to objectively report on events. The objective story doesn’t exist.

Human beings have to make selective judgements about the “constantly moving bramble bush of reality.” Objectivity results in recycling of false, corporate view of reality. 

Hang on a second, aren’t photographers an example of an objective recorder? No, they’re selective. The controversy around Robert Capa’s famous Spanish Civil War photograph is an example of this.

What story are we going to cover = the selective judgement of journalists. Sum total of broadsheet, tabloid and broadcast coverage of the UK everyday comes down to 70 stories. How can we say this is an objective story about the country’s day?

The Daily Mail drives the asylum story. Feeds the lower-middle class who are hostile to immigrants employed here. Fleet Street now covers the matter of immigration as if this Daily Mail view of things is true. Look closely and you see other angles that are also true. Sri Lankan-trained doctors coming here to work for free is one example of how you could selectively say that immigration is a good thing.

These selective judgements that are central to journalism are now increasingly made by outsiders. PR industry. Press releases appearing verbatim (or with a brief quote at the end of the story from the other side) in national newspapers.

PRs will give you a selected truth. Andrew Gilligan in the Foreign Affairs select committee, asked about information provided by Government. At top of witness list, Alistair Campbell. Used the PR’s cardinal rule: if you don’t have the answer, answer a different question. Campbell was asked the question “did you lie to us?”, and actually answered the question “did the BBC lie to us?” Raises a massive stink, leaks letter to Press Association. Makes the media select his version of the story.

Davies calls this the Ninja Turtle Syndrome. His kids wanted to watch the Ninja Turtles because other kids watched the Ninja Turtles. It’s all part of a compulsion to cover what everyone else is covering.

A culture of linking and blogging overrules all this!

Mail on Sunday - unnamed member of Royal family having sex with male worker at Buckingham Palace. Three sources: Prince Charles, gave passionate denial; Michael Forsett, gave passionate denial; George Smith, worked as footman at Buckingham Palace. Had conversation with Princess Diana, tape recorded it. Quoted as saying that on Royal visit to Egypt, that Michael Forsett raped him. Sectioned, never been to Egypt, alcohol problem. Conversation in news rooms everywhere: can we run this story? No. Do they run the story? Yes! Because everyone else is running it! Invisible pressure that is taking over the selective judgements that we should be making.

Other example: moral panic in society. War. Once we go into fight, we are on their side, and no matter what they do, they are right. A friend of Nick’s covering the Falklands conflict had hard evidence of story in Falklands War that British troops were shooting dead unarmed Argentinian POWs. His editor wouldn’t let him put out story because they had the preordained angle that “our boys are good.”

Also happens in the case of “big deaths.” E.g. Queen Mother. Refused to die. Longer she lived, more obituary material was prepared. So, worry by newspapers that there will be a tsunami of obit material that will crash journalist’s stories out of the paper.

Pre-ordained angle. The Observer threw out entire front page and ten pages, all went to Queen Mother story. Royalist guff.

“Millions grieving.” Difficult problem for television, because the pre-ordained moral panic story is of Diana, with seas of bouquets and huge crowds. Once the media got down to Clarence House, they realised there’s nobody there! One woman became the most famous woman in Britain because she was crying within a one mile radius of Clarence House. Everybody leapt upon her!

Zoe Margolis spotted the same thing happening with technology news pieces. They all get one guy from Stuff Magazine to do soundbites.

Balance has nothing to do with constructing the truth.

Reporter in a room with two men and a window. One man says it’s a clear day and the sun is shining. The other says it’s overcast and raining. The reporting runs back and writes his headline “Intense controversy over the state of the weather.” Fails to actually look out the window.

Seen in tabloids which report on unconfirmed or unconfirmable trash, with a denial from the involved parties tacked on the end.

Honesty is the defining ethic of journalism

A core symptom of churnalism are the editors who throw back reports without quotes “from the other side.” Misconception that you have to present all views. You don’t. You just need to represent the truth.

Made worse because the “balance rule” tends only applies to maverick statements of fact (Iraq, Scott Ritter, former UN arms inspector). They’re waving from sidelines, saying “I know what’s going on!” But the media ALWAYS has the MoD/Gov.t there to “balance” their views whenever they’re on Newsnight etc. Never works the other way round. So, when Gov.t says there are WMD all over Iraq, they didn’t get Scott in there, because they are making a consensus statement.

The balance rule is lethal.