Tell The Truth Revisited

This is going to be a little different.

A lot of times, I will write a post and nobody will leave comments. Some people who, for whatever reason, wish to avoid a public forum will contact me directly with their thoughts. This was the case on my last post “Tell The Truth”.

One person that e-mailed me was Dave Abner. Dave is a good friend and musician that I play gigs with from time to time. I always enjoy talking with Dave. I find that he is knowledgeable on many subjects in which we share interest. He has a background that includes time spent as a newspaper reporter/columnist/editor so, it was a natural for him to weigh in on the subject of the state of journalism. I thought you might find his take interesting. Here is part of the text from his e-mail regarding my post.

I note your blog post of Aug. 23 with the telling title “Tell The Truth.” You raise an interesting point.

The Rolla paper, Matt Drudge (laughable), Sam Donaldson, Dan Rather, Steve Grant…. Anyone’s an authority these days.

But why? Who’s to blame? Who said it was okay for the LA Times to quote the NY Times and for them to quote the mayor of Dallas who quotes the Dalai Lama who quotes Jack Pribek who quotes….

How did this happen? Who’s to blame?

All of us. CNN. Bill Gates. Blah blah blah blah.

In the old American days, there was a daily 22-minute national news hole– a 30-minute national newscast on one of the Big Three networks, with eight of the 30 minutes given over to commercial advertising. There’s actually a valid reason a 22-minute daily national news hole
was status quo for three decades.

With somewhere around 300 million Americans, and a planet populated by (six? seven? eight?) billion individuals, in truth the daily offering of bona fide intertnational news might on average occupy no more than 22 minutes of time.

Ted Turner and CNN decided about three decades back that news should be available 24/7 to the subscription-paying public in a broadcast format

I imagine you’re likely not interested in considering the minutiae of your premise, but one assertion you posit merits examination.

Pardon my paraphrase, but you assert that a sterling journalist would likely check all facts, run down all leads and stave off all devil’s advocates prior to publication.

In truth, the journalist who performs the services you seek would be out of a job within two publication cycles– in other words, if writing for a daily, your journalist might last two days.

Why? The almighty, thankless and infernal deadline.

Good print journalism, if published in book form, would garner a hefty price tag at Barnes and Noble. In other words, a single edition of a quality metropolitan daily, if published as a book, would likely bring a hefty price tag.

Another take: If you were to treat a single edition of the Wall Street Journal as you would a quality piece of non-fiction– and taking into account writer’s expertise, printing cost, distribution cost and all other related expenses, the weekend Wall Street Journal that sells for (50 cents/$1/$2/whatever the current going rate is) might instead be priced at $29.95.

It’s the nature of print journalism. Blame Benjamin Franklin if you must.

So, the end result is that anyone with a (byline/Website/resume/MySpace page/ax to grind/laptop) becomes an authority worthy of attribution and we’re all lessened by the sad
fact.

I then e-mailed Dave with this question; “If you were covering the story and the sheriff says ‘The DEA estimates 50 percent of all drug money go to support terrorists,’would you just let that lay? Or, as a journalist would you say, ’something sounds screwy there, the sheriff sounds full of shit.’ Then if you start looking around, you can’t find anything of the sort from the DEA, then what do you do?”

Dave’s response…

My action would depend in part on the day-to-day working relationship I had with that particular sheriff. If he was someone with whom I regularly rubbed shoulders– and assuming he was generally reliable — I would not initially question his data.

Instead, I would return to the office, and before I wrote my story, I would doublecheck his assertion. If his data then proved bogus, I would call him back before I wrote the story and ask, “Where did you get your data?”

If he turned me on to what appeared to be a bona fide DEA source (while at the same time keeping in mind that something smells fishy), I would then contact the DEA source and ask the same question: “Where did you get your data?”

A different perspective: If the sheriff had a history of spouting bullshit, I wouldn’t wait to get back to the office to check up on him. As soon as he spouted his bullshit data, I’d immediately question him: “Where did you get that information? Can I see it?”

Bottom line: When something feels full of shit to me, it’s likely gonna feel full of shit to any halfway knowledgable reader. The fact that the sheriff or some DEA lackey spouts it does not release me from my fact-checking obligation.

You can’t let bullshit assertions just fly by, regardless of the source. As a matter of fact, I might likely use the assertion in my story, just to lay a foundation of credibility.

A possible example:

“Following Thursday morning’s bust on Interstate 44, Sheriff Joe Butthead held a press conference on the Greene County Courthouse steps and said, ‘The DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) estimates 50 percent of all drug money goes to support terrorism.

“A DEA source failed to confirm Butthead’s assertion.

“Thursday afternoon, DEA spokesman Jeffrey Stubdick said, ‘I have no idea where Sheriff Butthead got his information. We’ve never released any figures attempting to tie drug proceeds to terrorism.’ ”

If you’re a credible journalist, you don’t doublecheck the sheriff’s facts because you want to rub his face in the mud. Lots of journalists fall prey to such juvenile tactics. Such a journalist needs to find a new career.

You doublecheck the facts because that’s your job. If you’re diligent about your job– check facts on a regular basis, each and every time — people will soon realize that you’re out to slam no one in particular but are only doing your job.

And if you have a track record of diligence, people such as the sheriff will know you’ll be checking up on them. They will soon learn that, if you are in the room, they need to get their facts straight before they open their mouths.

So, in a nutshell: If you do your job properly, you’ll have — in the long run — less fact-checking to do, and your job becomes easier.

Formula: In the final accounting, good journalists have an easier job than bad journalists.

What a concept.

What a concept indeed. The age of citizen journalism has arrived partly because the technology to present a story is readily available. It is also here, in part, because some journalists are incapable or unwilling to do the work. As I said before, if the first reporter doesn’t get it right, it likely won’t be corrected up the ladder.

The bloggers/citizen journalists are, obviously, not immune to bad reportage or the practice of running with the ball on a story, from another news source, that is flawed to begin with.

So, we have an infinite amount of information that leaves us reading between the lines and searching for quality. The bloggers are policing the “legit” reporters and the reporters are policing the bloggers.

The truth seems to be, all too often, an after thought in the atmosphere of this feeding frenzy. If you tell the truth, what you know for sure are the facts, it isn’t always a great story. Does the consumer need, constantly demand a story or, does the reporter feel the need to be the story teller?