Truth is a tricky concept. Journalism is all about decision making. If we were to give three people the same story – no matter how straight the story we would most likely end up with three different angles. So where do truth and objectivity lie? Or do they exist at all? I believe that of course we can strive towards truth and objectivity but perhaps achieving fairness is more realistic than achieving totally objectivity.
To achieve fairness and strive towards objectivity in our reporting we need to get the whole story. To do this we need to talk to as many people as many people as we can and keeping asking and re-asking questions. We need to take our ‘blinkers’ off and get as many viewpoints as we can.
There is concern that these days Journalists don’t spend the time needed to look at what’s behind a PR release. While a good media release can be a great foundation for a story – we need to verify the facts. Now, more than ever, there is information going straight into news from PR releases without verification of the facts. In fact a study by Mcnamara found that 31% of news stories in a variety of outlets were based wholly or partly on media releases. We must remember that PR companies have the invested interest of getting their stuff on the news and in the papers. As journalists it’s important we don’t blindly trust what they write. We can never cross-check too many facts!
As Tapsell and Varley point out in Journalist Theory in Practice ‘in order to present the while story, journalists must dare to move beyond reactive reporting – and seek deeper truths…enquiry must go past the purely knew-jerk reactive type of reporting, through an analytic phase- and on to a reflective stage.’.
You're right in saying that everybody comes up with a different intepretation of a story Nat. It is what I like to call "subjective." There will be some people that will think that it's newsworthy, while others will think it's not. There's also the problem of people thinking it's true. An example of this is Brett Stewart who today was thankfully found not guility of sexual assault. There will be people who would've believed that he was gulity, while others, including me always believed he was innocent.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the best journalists will continually check their facts and constantly seek out new information from different sources. It's not always that easy to do though. Time constraints and not being able to contact people becomes an issue.
It's definitely not good that we sometimes revert to producing articles from media releases, but unfortunately, sometimes we have to.
I suppose I should also mention that footage is also shown that is not true. "Pallywood" from Second Draft shows this quite clearly.
So, with all of this in mind, I completely agree that journalists need to go beyond reactive reporting, and thus commend you on a post that covers this issue rather nicely.
I agree with your comment that achieving fairness is more realistic than achieving objectivity. Despite our best efforts, objectivity remains out of reach for most journalists. Deadlines make it impossible for us to get the complete story. Sources may not want to comment on a story, making it very difficult for a journalist to get the whole story.
ReplyDeleteWith this mind, I believe the best thing we can do as journalists is strive to report the truth. There are some external factors we have no control over.