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Introduction: Journalism on the Rocks?
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10314 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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12 / 1993 |
1,464 Words |
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Editor
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The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. . . . Perhaps an editor might . . . divide his paper into four chapters, heading the first, truths; 2d, Probabilities; 3d, Possibilities; 4, Lies. --Thomas Jefferson
Controversy over errors and untruths in the media is not of recent coinage, as Jefferson's barbs suggest.
From the historical beginnings of their profession, journalists, being human, have been dogged by the twin banes of miscommunication and personal prejudice. Miscommunication crops up when the newsperson, quizzing people for information, attitudes, or analysis, inadvertently records their responses incompletely or incorrectly.
From the outset, getting quotes from news sources exactly right in print has been a near-impossible task (except for the rare reporter possessed of total recall).The challenge has remained formidable from the era of the quill pen right up through the age of magnetic tape, when reporters often do not have enough time to check their imperfect notes against statements they may have recorded on audio- or videotape.
And even when videotaped comments are put directly on the air (or "on the cable"), they suffer violence from time to time. Due to the fast-paced nature of television and the dependency on pithy sound bites, a news subject's comments can become skewed through the snipping away of the context in the editing process. The twisting can be compounded if newspeople misunderstand the news subject's views and a correspondent presents a misleading "explanation" to supplement the leanly edited videotape.
Personal prejudice has also been journalists' constant companion through the centuries. They have had to wrestle with the fact that the information they were called on to process into finished articles was usually filtered willy-nilly through the distorting lens of their own personalities.
In some eras and areas, of course, such prejudice has actually been encouraged and vaunted in the interest of adding flair to news reports and attracting a loyal following. In the decade before the American Revolution, for example, newspapers in the thirteen colonies were divided into fiercely royalist or colonialist camps. And today many newspapers and radio and TV outlets in
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