Andrew Kantor's Place: Newsroom

Newsroom

Published 7/17/05

Working in a newsroom has some distinct advantages, most obviously getting at least some of the local news earlier than most other people.

What I like a lot about it, though, is being able to get more than what’s in the paper. And it leads me to some questions about what a newspaper should provide.

For example (and this is just an example off the top of my head — it’s not a real story), I might read about a scuffle between, say, police and protesters somewhere. The police say the protesters got out of hand; the protesters say police started hitting them without provocation.

The news story will be as balanced as possible, of course.

But let’s say I read that and want to know what really went down. I can walk over and ask the reporter, “Hey, John, do you know what really happened?”

And there’s a good chance he will. He might say, “Yeah, I could tell those cops were handing me BS. They were laughing while I was interviewing the captain.”

Or maybe the other way around: “Yeah, I know those two cops. They’re not the type, and you could see that the protesters were lying.”

But that kind of stuff won’t make it into print, of course. It’s biased, based on reporters’ opinions, and unprovable.

But it’s also probably true. And it’s also the kind of thing a lot of people would like to know, but never will.

Hence my questions, which I don’t have the answers to.

Papers pride themselves on being objective, but what if one side is clearly wrong and the other right? How do you balance telling the true story and telling the complete story.

Maybe this is one of the reasons people are starting to look at non-mainstrem news sources — it gives them that kind of perspective that your typical reporter bends over backwards to avoid.

Maybe that’s why the British tabloids do so well. They express opinion, and they calls ‘em as they sees ‘em.

[shrug] No answer I can think of. But I do wonder about the stories that I can’t ask a reporter about. What really happened?

The Fray

3 responses (add yours)

mad macks says:

the problem is that the media IS biased- at least in the opinion of much of the public. i, for one, do not trust the media. they have their own agenda and they are a business out for the almighty buck. that especially goes for the big corporate owned news providers… i can’t read or see the news without wondering if i’m getting it straight or in a way that makes me see a report THE WAY THEY WANT ME TO SEE IT.

July 17th, 2005 at 8:01 PM

Andrew says:

Everyone’s biased. We’re human, so we’re going to have opinions. But I think you’ll find a lot more bias in national TV news than in newspapers.

Where I work, I’ve never heard of a reporter or an editor do a story — or change a story — out of bias. Our corporate bosses have nothing to say about the news we cover (unless we write about the paper itself, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

Reporters are grunts. Guys and gals whose whole focus is to get stories — to “feed the beast” as the phrase goes. There are Democrats and Republicans, and I’m sure there are individual biases being reflected.

But there’s no corporate overseer planning our coverage. Reporters are *way* too cranky to submit to that kind of stuff. No reporter gets a message from his editor, “Management wants you to cover such-and-such.” It just doesn’t work that way.

Now, the editorial pages are a different story. That’s where management gets to express its views. On our paper, and I believe on most others, the two are very separate. (At my paper they’re on separate floors, in fact.) And reporters will sometimes agree, sometimes disagree with what comes out of Editorial.

That’s why I say that national TV news is where you’ll see the bias, because those broadcasts are much more controlled from above than newspaper stories. They’re carefully scripted, carefully planned. Papers — well, papers are just out there writing about whatever they can find to write about.

July 17th, 2005 at 8:55 PM

mad macks says:

can’t disagree with you there; however, would the same hold true if you were a political, rather than a tech, columnist? i respect your opinionated views on matters dealing with, say, file-sharing or rights of privacy, but if you were being as critical on things such as government handling of iraq or its support of big corporations, would you be given as much freedom?
if the press dealt with issues the way they should (being more critical of the government in areas they truly deserve to be criticized) i doubt we would have seen george w. being voted back in. unfortunately, most big media (admittedly tv news moreso than print media it seems) are owned by big corporations that have some sort of conflict of interest keeping them from being as opinionated as they should be.

July 19th, 2005 at 3:44 AM