So I’ve been watching journalism movies like mad the last few days (today was The Front Page) in preparation for my friend Alec Kerr’s television program Lost in Movies on the local community access channel. I’ll be taping tomorrow for a show on journalism movies. I’ll be sure to post a clip once it airs, but here is an extra from a previous show:
I love This American Life. The first time I walked into a radio studio, it was because I wanted to learn how to do what they do. Today I was looking around for something connected to the presidential primary and I stumbled on this critique of this story (listen to the full story below).
Granted, it takes an hour, but you should to listen to it. It is just the type of abuse journalists should be looking for and bringing to the public’s attention. And reporters can’t be timid just because someone threatens to sue. Luckily there are laws protecting reporters who have the courage to criticize people in power. Rock on, Ira, and keep keeping them honest.
I added a new blog post category—Afghanistan—in hopes of needing it in the future. I’m not really sure what the plan is yet (still working on that), or if that is really where I want to go next, but I’ve been kicking it around for a while. We’ll see if I put it to good use. Iraq, I know, was well-loved.
I just finished watching The Paper, Shattered Glass (Vanity Fair article about the true story) and The Killing Fields (New York Times article about Dith Pran, one of the central figures in the film) all in a row for a show I’m doing with a friend on the local public access channel. It was essentially an afternoon packed with reporting.
Between the three there were a litany of pitfalls alongside poignent examples of why reporting is so crucial. Two are based on true stories. They would be striking enough if they were fiction.
I love reporting. When I go back to work after a weekend it never feels like work. It is about trying to catch myself up on what happened over the last few days to try to fill everyone else in. I love it.
But the impact of reporting—whether the story is about about a candidate for selectman with a criminal record or genocide in Cambodia—is central to our democracy. Through all of three movies, even the one filed under fiction, that central tenant of journalism holds true. It holds true for me as well, and that’s why I love it.
Click here to see photos of and by Dith Pran, or here to see a video. They are all worth it. Pran died of cancer in 2008.
I read this last week, and I neglected to post it. It chronicles Seal Team Six as they raided the compound in Abbottabad to kill Osama Bin Laden. It’s an amazing perspective, the kind of reporting that really gets inside the national security apparatus. Reading Limits of Power right on the heels of reading this article raises some interesting questions about the path and future of the American military. “Success,” but at what cost?
This is fantastic visualization of something everyone has felt, at least for the last three years. Pages like this reassure me that modern media is an asset for reporters, not a liability. Click the photo for the real thing.
This is cool: apparently, according to a federal court judge, there is something called “reporter’s privilege.” It’s like attorney-client privilege or doctor-patient privilege, I guess, only not so strong. It’s a good thing to have, however. I plan to hold onto it.
I have been following the disappearance of 11-year-old Celina Cass since the day she disappeared with interest. It happened in a place I love (the North Country), and it closely resembled a story I covered (the disappearance of Krista Dittmeyer). Each day I’d check the local media and Facebook for updates, and I often heard the latest on NHPR as I drove to work.
Four months ago, when it was Krista Dittmeyer who disappeared, I sent NHPR a note to see if they wanted anything about it. No thanks, they responded, we don’t really cover crime.
I was happy about that, after seeing the television news crews salivating for the latest details (usually gleaned from my reporting in the Sun). I cover crime, but I don’t see day to day coverage of it really adding value to readers’ lives. It’s about feeding their interest, not informing them—probably important from the business side of things, but from the journalistic side of things not that valuable.
But when it came to Celina Cass, NHPR was on it. They had repeated stories about her, right down to when the Attorney General’s office announced it was her body they pulled from the Connecticut River.
I’m not sure anything really changed, however. They have a staff reporter up north, and he had a story to cover. He would have been covering something else if not her disappearance, so they took whatever he could offer.
I, on the other hand, would have been an extra expense. As a stringer, I get paid for what airs. If I covered the Dittmeyer disappearance for them it would have been a hit to their budget. Some part of it may have come down to money.
But also some part of it may have been staff. A few weeks ago I got a note from NHPR saying their news director had left. He’d been there 11 years, and I’d worked for him for two and a half. He’d been the one who got behind my trip to Iraq, and he’d been a great guide on how to improve my radio reporting. Perhaps his news judgement in part effected those decisions.
But ultimately what I take away from this is that reporting is a business, even when that business is a non-profit. There is a bottom line, and every decision that costs money has to be carefully considered. I see that at the Sun too, where business decisions have to be made. If I had a week to dive into every story I wanted to I could do fantastic work, but that isn’t an available luxury. I sometimes have a day to do a story, sometimes a few hours.
At the Reporter I was far enough removed from business decisions to be oblivious to them, but at the Sun, where I walk past the ad people and the publisher every day, I get to peek into their world.
Reporters are free from financial restraints, at least at a well-run paper like the Sun, as I’m sure they are at a well-run station like NHPR. But their impact still makes it into reporting, even if its in a roundabout way like choosing not to cover a big story or a complex story because you don’t have the resources. It’s interesting to see, and something I wouldn’t have noticed were I not on the inside.
The Ron Paul interviews are approaching 7,000 views, and when I got into work today I got this encouraging email:
As the last print journalist, I understand where Mr. McDanel is coming from. The coverage of the Casey Anthony trial (of which I know next to nothing) adds so little to our public discourse, and yet hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to it. The substance of what candidates actually stand for, meanwhile, is crucial to our democracy. If people aren’t informed they can’t self-govern. Newspapers still play a crucial role in this. It’s good some people still recognize it.
On the other hand it’s too bad it takes a video posted on YouTube to make someone appreciate newspapers again. Hopefully that isn’t a sign of the print apocalypse.
Yesterday I got to listen to a colleague make a call that would have intimidated anyone. My colleague received a bunch of emails from a local political figure where the person was using racial slurs to describe the president of the United States (look for the story, it should be out soon), and he was trying to talk to the guy who wrote them.
That, in my opinion, is when reporters have to earn their dinner. And he was doing a fantastic job.
I don’t often have a list of questions when I call for an interview, but then again I have no problem calling back a second or third time to ask what I forgot to ask the first time. If I call back again that’s when I’ll have a list — it’ll be those things that I missed. Usually if I missed something with one person and I’ve got a few more people to talk to I’ll get it from someone else, but then there are those times only that one person can answer. That’s when you call back again and again.
I had to call a State Police officer four times before he would speak to me for a recent story. I left messages and may have even sent a couple emails, but people have a much harder time ignoring you when you have them on the phone (even more true when you have them in person).
When you have to ask someone something hard you have to explain to them you want to get their side out there. Sometimes that doesn’t work. The other day I was trying to convince a police officer who had recently resigned that his resignation was too close to when money was stolen from the police department for me to leave him out of the story. It would be a glaring hole in the story, I said, and I have to include it (I was told he resigned the Friday of the week the money was found missing). He did talk to me, although he said he would have preferred I had left his name out of the story entirely.
That’s what it is — convincing people you aren’t their enemy, that you just want to give them a chance to speak. I try my best to represent what they say accurately, but sometimes they don’t think you do. A selectman I cover is constantly complaining he is taken out of context, but then he repeats exactly what I say he said. He doesn’t like to be controversial, but some of his views are, and people react strongly to them. Those complaints are going to come in. Not much you can do but keep trying to be true to your subject’s intent as best you understand it.
I love interviewing. I’m not a talkative person by nature, but people want to tell reporters things. I’m happy to be on the other side of the table from them when they speak.
ErikEisele.com 