Most young journalists now venture into the publishing world brandishing a degree in communications. When I first began hunting for a job back in 1998, I had a degree, but it wasn’t in communications. I had completed two-thirds of a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching double degree before I had a late change of heart about becoming an English teacher. (Turned out I liked learning about English a lot more than I liked teaching it). On my mother’s suggestion I pursued a career in journalism instead, and thus added some ‘professional writing’ subjects to my majors in literature and creative writing. But I emerged with a plain old Bachelor of Arts and certainly didn’t have a wide knowledge of media or media law.
I scored my first journalism gig on Australian Printer magazine in August of 1998. Even though I was listed in the skite box as ‘journalist’, I was, for many intents and purposes, a cadet, and I began to learn my chops the old fashioned way.
My mentor was the venerable Patrick Howard, once described by a mutual colleague of ours as “the eccentric Irish philosopher”. He was certainly that, but he was also an editor from the old school and I doubt I could have learned the ropes from a better mentor. My brief schooling in journalism and PR had taught me the difference between hard news writing and feature writing, for instance, but it was Patrick who helped guide and shape a young writer with a lot of enthusiasm but little experience.
The internet was around in those days, but it was still more of an abstract concept for much of the business world. Media companies, by and large, were eyeing it suspiciously, and would go on to have a knee-jerk reaction that ultimately proved to be self-immolating (read my thoughts on that here). The internet would go on to change media irrevocably in many ways, of course, but when I read news stories today, there are two things that offend the old-school journo that Patrick cultivated in my psyche.
1. EDITORIALISING
Historically, a hard news story was straight reporting. The old ‘five Ws and one H’ rule applied: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Hard news was objective and impassive. That didn’t mean it was boring; it could be chock full of active language and vivid descriptions, but it did not contain any hint of an opinion.
Now, for contrast, I offer you the headline and opening paragraph of a story published by the Sydney Morning Herald on July 17 this year:
‘Australia tops the world for climate change denial: study’
Nearly one in five Australians do not believe in climate change, making the country the worst in the world for climate sceptics, a study of almost 20,000 people has found.
The editorialising drips from every word. The politically charged (and judgmental) term ‘climate change denial’ has no business in a headline. Then we have the phrase ‘worst in the world’ to describe the results of the study, which is pure subjective opinion – for those who believe climate change is nothing but an environmentalist gravy train based on disproven science, that result is actually ‘the best in the world’. And since I’m critiquing this story, I’ll also point out the grammatical error: it should be ‘one in five Australians does not believe’ – the subject of the sentence is ‘one’, an individual, and one does something.
There was a time when a sub-editor would have read this, screwed up the paper it was typed on, thrown it at the offending journalist, and told him to start again. But the post-modernist or ‘gonzo’ view of journalism, advocated by Hunter S. Thompson and his various contemporaries, gave the writer licence to put forth his views or even become a character in a report. It took a long time for this to spread to hard news reporting, but with the internet and social media enabling widespread narcissism, the lines between fact and opinion have been increasingly smudged.
Now hang on, you might say, newspapers have always editorialised, especially the tabloids. They have taken a stand on social issues or advocated for a particular political party at election time. True – but they made their editorialising articles obvious. The above story from the Herald, on the other hand, is deceptive: it presents as straight reporting while banging its political drum. That’s what I object to.
2. CREATING THE NEWS
Prior to social media, a news story had to be based on something – an event, a discussion, the release of a noteworthy report. Now, on slow news days (or, more and more, every day), journalists ‘invent’ the news. They republish the worthless ranting on Twitter and tout it as ‘public opinion’. They take a harmless joke or off-hand comment, blow it out of proportion, and then hector the ‘offender’ until he or she apologises. (I find this practise particularly odious, not to mention hypocritical; if the private conduct of journalists was held to such an impossible moral standard there would be an apology maelstrom.)
Worse than the acts themselves is what they represent: lazy journalism fostered by cost cutting. Don’t have enough staff to get real news or valid opinions? Just trawl Twitter for a while and palm that off as investigative journalism. Blegh.