The Guardian’s newsroom after the hacks have gone

By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk








THE PRESS IS NEVER FREE AND IS NEVER OBJECTIVE

The secret is not to expect too much from your media channels


For some reason I have been thinking of my old journalism tutor, John Short, at Trinity & All Saints College (TASC) recently. Since I am now an active journalist in the print media which is exactly the field he trained me to work in, his influence has permeated all that I do for this publication.

Indeed, it can be said that teachers live again in their pupils. Since John was a Welshman it follows that a significant part of my media knowledge and skills have come through a Welsh filter.

Since you are, by virtue of the fact that you are reading these letters in our organ, a newspaper reader I would like you to imbibe, if I might, my view of what a consumer of journalism can reasonably expect from members of my profession.

My argument is that everything you get from the media – print, broadcast and electronic – is incurably subjective and that you will probably never get a truly fair and objective viewpoint from anywhere, anyplace anytime on anything. I am truly sorry if that is not what you want me to write, but there it is.

You know, being a working journalist is not like being a member of some other more conventional profession. It is not like being a doctor, a lawyer or a house electrician. Those people provide services for economic rewards and the effects are strictly limited. The doctor cures the stomachache, the lawyer gets you your damages and the electrician mends your wiring system. The journalist, by contrast, tells you about everything that is going on in the universe and about your place in it. In that sense, the journalist is more like the priest or the shaman. His subject is the cosmos and who and what you are and your place in it.

Think of the days before William Tyndale’s printing press. Most people knew next to nothing about what went on on the globe outside their own personal immediate experiences; their villages and their surrounding fields circumscribed their worlds. News from outside came in the form of rumours voiced by travelling peddlers, itinerant entertainers and the occasional royal proclamations. Only rulers and princes received regular high-level news of the wide world and that was by difficult, expensive and slow courier and messaging systems.

Today, news of what is going on is blared out on print, broadcast and Internet platforms non-stop 24/7. But are we better informed than the peasant of yore? I submit: No. Not really.

Everything you know about what goes on beyond your own direct and private experience comes to you primarily from journalists. Think of 9/11. You probably learnt of it from television, newspaper, radio and Internet journalists. Those who labour in this particular vineyard are specially trained and conditioned to conform to the standards of the public communications industry. Entry is difficult (I know!) and most have been through the mincing machine of preparation courses in which they are made to understand implicitly that a code of conduct has to be adhered to. Many train and never get to be in harness. After graduation, many knock but only some are admitted.

In our third world homelands the penalties for non-compliance by journalists are crude and direct. Offenders are beaten up and/or killed. In the advanced countries it is subtler. The maverick is sacked and becomes another face in the unemployment statistics until he truly repents and is re-admitted to the fold; else he seeks a career in another field.

Journalism at professional levels rests on two pillars: verification and objectivity. When I say “professional” I am deliberately excluding the clearly partisan channels of communication such as publications by political parties, pressure groups and the underground press. A man or woman who is capable of verifying incoming news adequately and has the ability to step outside a situation and view it independently without emotion and without bias has the makings of a professional journalist. Those who cannot should look elsewhere for their careers.

Many people want to get their news and views aired in the media. Typically, a newspaper receives much more incoming material than it could possibly publish. That which is earmarked for possible use should, in theory, be checked for veracity. That is not so in practice.

What tends to happen is that there are a number of known and relatively trusted sources of news which are relied on. It is assumed by the usually quite harassed news editor and his team of sub-editors that certain sources are more or less OK. Explicitly self-serving information such as advertising brochures and leaflets from single-issue pressure groups tend to be ignored.

In real life the major sources of news are oligopolised by a small number of news agencies. A story is frequently circulated around and around the agencies until it is stale, when it is dropped. The news editor with a deadline to watch simply does not have the time to check up and verify. Somebody somewhere had gone out and created the story in the first place by being at the right place at the right time or by interviewing the right person. All that follows is the mass retailing of his original achievement.

One Asian journalist described the production of news in newsrooms as “churnalism” because volume output to deadline is the goal of the heartbeat of the frenzied activities.

Typically, when a quote is given with something like “a source in the police speaking on condition of anonymity” the news editor has no time to dig further. He either uses it before deadline or he does not.

Therefore, I submit that verification is an ideal which is taught to students on journalism courses, which is honoured in the breach in the workplace. Time and economic constraints see to that.

What about objectivity? The Collins Concise Dictionary defines it as: “1. Existing independently of perception or an individual’s conceptions. 2. Undisturbed by emotion or personal bias. 3. Of or relating to external phenomena as opposed to thoughts, feelings etc.”

Michael Schudson explains objectivity thus: “The objectivity norm guides journalists to separate facts from values and to report only the facts. Objective reporting is supposed to be cool, rather than emotional, in tone. Objective reporting takes pains to represent fairly each leading side in a political controversy. According to the objectivity norm, the journalist’s job consists of reporting something called “news” without commentating on it, slanting it, or shaping its formulation in any way.”

At TASC the journalism students are taught that objectivity as far as they are concerned is:

§ Balance and even-handedness in presenting different sides of an issue
§ Accuracy and realism in reporting
§ Presenting all main relevant points
§ Separating facts from opinion, but treating opinion as relevant
§ Avoiding slant, rancour or devious purposes

That is fine in theory, but in practice it is well nigh impossible. When one has particular private views they emerge in one’s work.

Furthermore, there is the agenda setting function. As stated above, almost every publication in the land is inundated by more material than it can possibly use. Selection has to take place. Somebody somewhere in the news room, usually the sub-editor and sometimes his boss the news editor has the job of selecting what to publish and what not to publish. Personal psychology plays a vast part here. Academic media people have spent years studying the mental processes which govern how and why newsroom staff choose some stories and not others.

Quite apart from the individual psychological aspects there are grosser external factors at play. The zeitgeist and specific social conditions virtually dictate what gets prioritised and what gets omitted or downplayed. Some crimes are highlighted and the perpetrators are demonised. Other crimes are trivialised and the perpetrators are excused.

Consider who gets called a “terrorist” and who gets called a “freedom fighter.” The bald truth is that one man’s “terrorist” is another man’s “freedom fighter.” The definition is decided on which side he is on. In terms of a journalist in the West, if the person is fighting for and on behalf of the West he is indeed a “freedom fighter” and if, like bin Laden, he is opposed to the West he is a “terrorist.” If the journalist does not want to play ball he should check up on the bus route to his nearest unemployment benefit office.

Some right wing American writers are complaining that in the USA when a white man kills a black man there is a huge hullabaloo all over the nation but when a black man kills a white man it usually only gets reported locally in the town in which the killing took place and there is a news blackout elsewhere. They have given graphic detailed and dated examples with references for follow up checking.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to the powerful but hidden pressures exerted by big business and governmental agencies. Small newspapers such as the one you are holding in you hands are mindful of their advertisers because they pay the bills. In the event that a newspaper has several major advertisers who buy space in bulk and pay big money the prospect of an advertising boycott from those quarters is to face death. These business interests can and sometimes do partially or completely control editorial policy. Also, there are governmental and quasi-governmental entities which have the real or purported authority to guide news selection and presentation.

I hope I have helped you with your expectations about the facts and arguments which is a newspaper.

THE END

This article was first published on 5 April, 2006 in the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic