For those of you who don't know, I've had a very unusual background in that I was an overseas teacher for nearly a decade, including 3 years in Kabul, Afghanistan. What I saw in the area of journalism there confirmed my worst suspicions that had been planted at an early age. Here's what's true of journalists, in general:
Fast forward a few years and there's another tragedy in the same town as a couple people died in a ditch cave-in. Same reporters showed up, same routine, same stock "interviews" on camera with the same sort of stock responses,... except this time I saw some people tell them off. One guy said, point blank, "You people only show up when there's a tragedy, and you don't really care about any of the people involved, and you've already written the story before you ever arrived, so why do I want to be on camera, being the dumb@$$ saying, 'Yeah, it's a tragedy,' so that you can have something to show on the news tonight?" It turned out he wasn't the only one that said some version of more or less the same thing. When the reporters got defensive about it, saying that they were there because they cared, others cared, etc., some of the locals turned the tables and beyond grilling them: "Oh, so what is something new that you learned? How will it help the families who lost husbands and fathers to see you on TV tonight, pretending to look sad and serious?" There was something close to a boycott as people refused to talk to them, but eventually they came across a local pastor and some guy in town to put on camera because neither had heard what the others had said. The reporter had the gall to interview both within about 10' of each other (on Main Street, again, of course) while changing the direction of the camera to make it appear that it was two different parts of town to anyone who wasn't already familiar with it.
Fast forward about a decade and a half, and I'm living in Kabul, Afghanistan, and after every suicide bombing, attack on some western business, etc., I'm seeing the exact same B.S. being played out on the world's stage of Kabul. Christiane Amoupoure had won almost every international reporting award known, yet she struck me as an ignorant and self-absorbed diva who 1) knew next to nothing about the subject; 2) did nothing to prepare for her story; and 3) repeated the same talking points that she would have cited if she were having hors d'oeuvres and sipping champagne while discussing politics at a D.C. or Manhattan cocktail party. Because I was in Kabul for three years, and because it's relatively speaking a small community as far as where western people could go to eat, etc., we always knew where she was filming from and why. She wasn't the only one, fwiw; they all did the same. If you turn on the news tonight and see a panoramic city shot of Kabul or some other frequently war-torn place, you're seeing a camera crew and a celebrity "journalist" being paid a lot of money to stand on top of a very nice hotel in close to perfect comfort and security while pretending that they're roughing it out in the wilds of a bloodthirsty place. If you pay attention, you'll see the same landmarks filmed from the same angles on all of the networks. Their "interviews" of people were hand-picked--the same as in my hometown, decades ago--to be a) convenient (usually people who worked at the hotel/restaurant where they were), b) willing to be on camera, and c) saying exactly what they were expected to say. An Afghan friend of mine happened to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time, and his English was perfect, so they lined him up to be on TV. He gave a brilliant, direct synopsis of what had happened and why,... and so they cut him and left him out of the story, choosing instead to show more or less the same guy saying the same thing as always. They were no more interested in finding out the truth of what happened and why than the Sioux Falls reporters cared about my community when I was growing up.
When there is carnage in the background, you can be assured that they will show the worst of it from the most dramatic angle possible. They're not interested in reporting "truth," so all that matters is having something dramatic. It was a common thing to see them cover something that was relatively mundane--for example, someone (Afghan) was killed at a checkpoint (by another Afghan) for not stopping--but there would be tight shots of the shattered glass and blood on the ground, etc.,... but that sort of thing would only make the news if it happened just outside their hotel as they would all but run out to film it with the dramatic background, then run back inside the hotel while a local camera guy got my dramatic up-close footage. One of my students was a stringer for the BBC in the summer of 2006 because she was very articulate, and her older sister had been proven to be good at doing the same thing for Reuters. Here's the problem: my student had just completed 8th grade; she was 14 years old. Whatever she told them, that was the story. That was also some of the better reporting coming out of Kabul at that time.
As for not knowing much about the subjects that they covered, that's in large part baked into the cake because "journalists" study "journalism" when they go to "journalism school" at universities. Whenever they're outside of their comfort zone--and this is as diverse as outdoor writers discussing local trout streams to sports writers discussing football to local reporters discussing school performance to international reporters discussing wide-ranging, complex international events--they're faking it. They're very good at faking it. There are experts hired to help guide them and direct the narrative, and they memorize a few talking points, and--ta da!--journalism. The angle of the story is dependent upon the perspective of the journalist and the person in the background (stringers, etc.) who feed the info and storyline to the journalist. If you're ever being interviewed for anything, especially if you're knowledgeable about whatever they're asking, be sure to ask them why they hold the perspective that they do. If you make them get beyond the talking points, there's often/usually nothing more there. TV "journalists" are just another flavor of celebrity, and most print journalists are people who were decent writers who were hired to write stories, whether or not they knew a lot about the topics that they covered. The most intelligent, informed people talking about complicated things end up saying cliches that don't sound good on TV: "It's complicated," "There's more than one or two issues," etc. It doesn't matter if the story being covered is why some illiterate bumpkin just blew himself up in Kabul, or why Chinander's defense failed to stop Northwestern's offense at the end of regulation. Reporters don't really care about the real answers if it won't be good in a soundbite.
- They're often not very knowledgeable about the subject(s) that they're covering;
- The bigger the name, the less likely that they do any of the hard work involved in researching, cross-checking, interviewing, etc.;
- It is a rarity to ever find a single story where the reporter went in with an open mind and THEN reported what they found.
Fast forward a few years and there's another tragedy in the same town as a couple people died in a ditch cave-in. Same reporters showed up, same routine, same stock "interviews" on camera with the same sort of stock responses,... except this time I saw some people tell them off. One guy said, point blank, "You people only show up when there's a tragedy, and you don't really care about any of the people involved, and you've already written the story before you ever arrived, so why do I want to be on camera, being the dumb@$$ saying, 'Yeah, it's a tragedy,' so that you can have something to show on the news tonight?" It turned out he wasn't the only one that said some version of more or less the same thing. When the reporters got defensive about it, saying that they were there because they cared, others cared, etc., some of the locals turned the tables and beyond grilling them: "Oh, so what is something new that you learned? How will it help the families who lost husbands and fathers to see you on TV tonight, pretending to look sad and serious?" There was something close to a boycott as people refused to talk to them, but eventually they came across a local pastor and some guy in town to put on camera because neither had heard what the others had said. The reporter had the gall to interview both within about 10' of each other (on Main Street, again, of course) while changing the direction of the camera to make it appear that it was two different parts of town to anyone who wasn't already familiar with it.
Fast forward about a decade and a half, and I'm living in Kabul, Afghanistan, and after every suicide bombing, attack on some western business, etc., I'm seeing the exact same B.S. being played out on the world's stage of Kabul. Christiane Amoupoure had won almost every international reporting award known, yet she struck me as an ignorant and self-absorbed diva who 1) knew next to nothing about the subject; 2) did nothing to prepare for her story; and 3) repeated the same talking points that she would have cited if she were having hors d'oeuvres and sipping champagne while discussing politics at a D.C. or Manhattan cocktail party. Because I was in Kabul for three years, and because it's relatively speaking a small community as far as where western people could go to eat, etc., we always knew where she was filming from and why. She wasn't the only one, fwiw; they all did the same. If you turn on the news tonight and see a panoramic city shot of Kabul or some other frequently war-torn place, you're seeing a camera crew and a celebrity "journalist" being paid a lot of money to stand on top of a very nice hotel in close to perfect comfort and security while pretending that they're roughing it out in the wilds of a bloodthirsty place. If you pay attention, you'll see the same landmarks filmed from the same angles on all of the networks. Their "interviews" of people were hand-picked--the same as in my hometown, decades ago--to be a) convenient (usually people who worked at the hotel/restaurant where they were), b) willing to be on camera, and c) saying exactly what they were expected to say. An Afghan friend of mine happened to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time, and his English was perfect, so they lined him up to be on TV. He gave a brilliant, direct synopsis of what had happened and why,... and so they cut him and left him out of the story, choosing instead to show more or less the same guy saying the same thing as always. They were no more interested in finding out the truth of what happened and why than the Sioux Falls reporters cared about my community when I was growing up.
When there is carnage in the background, you can be assured that they will show the worst of it from the most dramatic angle possible. They're not interested in reporting "truth," so all that matters is having something dramatic. It was a common thing to see them cover something that was relatively mundane--for example, someone (Afghan) was killed at a checkpoint (by another Afghan) for not stopping--but there would be tight shots of the shattered glass and blood on the ground, etc.,... but that sort of thing would only make the news if it happened just outside their hotel as they would all but run out to film it with the dramatic background, then run back inside the hotel while a local camera guy got my dramatic up-close footage. One of my students was a stringer for the BBC in the summer of 2006 because she was very articulate, and her older sister had been proven to be good at doing the same thing for Reuters. Here's the problem: my student had just completed 8th grade; she was 14 years old. Whatever she told them, that was the story. That was also some of the better reporting coming out of Kabul at that time.
As for not knowing much about the subjects that they covered, that's in large part baked into the cake because "journalists" study "journalism" when they go to "journalism school" at universities. Whenever they're outside of their comfort zone--and this is as diverse as outdoor writers discussing local trout streams to sports writers discussing football to local reporters discussing school performance to international reporters discussing wide-ranging, complex international events--they're faking it. They're very good at faking it. There are experts hired to help guide them and direct the narrative, and they memorize a few talking points, and--ta da!--journalism. The angle of the story is dependent upon the perspective of the journalist and the person in the background (stringers, etc.) who feed the info and storyline to the journalist. If you're ever being interviewed for anything, especially if you're knowledgeable about whatever they're asking, be sure to ask them why they hold the perspective that they do. If you make them get beyond the talking points, there's often/usually nothing more there. TV "journalists" are just another flavor of celebrity, and most print journalists are people who were decent writers who were hired to write stories, whether or not they knew a lot about the topics that they covered. The most intelligent, informed people talking about complicated things end up saying cliches that don't sound good on TV: "It's complicated," "There's more than one or two issues," etc. It doesn't matter if the story being covered is why some illiterate bumpkin just blew himself up in Kabul, or why Chinander's defense failed to stop Northwestern's offense at the end of regulation. Reporters don't really care about the real answers if it won't be good in a soundbite.
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