BethMellor’s Weblog

Last week, I had to make the most difficult phone call I have ever had to make.

“I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but I’m calling from The Scotsman and we understand that someone by this surname was killed in a car crash on the M8 last night. Was it a relative of yours?”

“Yes, it was my cousin.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that and want to offer you my condolences on behalf of The Scotsman. We would like to put an article about the car crash, paying tribute to your cousin, in tomorrow’s paper. Would you or any other relatives be able to talk to me for the article?”

The family did agree to talk, and the parents of the deceased spoke to a colleague of mine. This is the final article we produced:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Tycoon-25–killed-.4883448.jp

Although making this call felt slightly intrusive into the privacy of a grieving family, it also gave the family a chance to have the final word about their son in a national newspaper. And, as my colleague pointed out, it can be comforting at times like this for families to know that the wider community is interested and cares about such a death.

The Gallardo

The crash was, moreover, particularly newsworthy because the car involved was a Lamborghini Gallardo. Although focussed on the tragic loss suffered by one family, the article also highlighted the potential dangers of super cars (the Gallardo has a V-10 engine and can reach 60mph from a standing start in 3.9 seconds) and the dangers of speeding (the Police could not confirm the speed that the car was travelling but the Gallardo has a top speed of 196mph).

Intruding into people’s privacy is part of the job in journalism. The key to doing this with integrity, according to my colleagues at The Scotsman, is being respectful and understanding of their circumstances, even when your editor is threatening to drop the article if you don’t get a key quote from a member of the family for a piece.

In the media, speed is everything. ‘Get the story, and get it first’ is what reporters are paid to do.

But, according to Charles S. Feldman and Howard Rosenberg, the speed of news delivery and the 24-hour news cycle has now become dangerously fast. Their new book, No Time To Think, argues that there is:

 “an insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed at which it is produced, is only half thought out, half true, and lazily repeated from anonymous sources interested in selling opinion and wild speculation as news.”

Mr. Feldman argued on Radio 4 this morning that the increasing speed of news delivery has also had an impact upon government leaders. There is so much media pressure to move the news agenda forwards that not only the public but also key decision-makers don’t have enough time to think about the gravity and consequences of events.

 If the Cuban missile crisis had happened today, he said, we may not have had the same outcome.

This increasing speed of news delivery – and the consequences of inaccurate and unreflective journalism – completely undermines the valuable role that the media play in society.

It seems to me that we have now come to a breaking point where news is practically instantaneous. Now, media providers need to concentrate not on skimming another second off their news delivery times, but on ensuring that the product they deliver has integrity. As with internet journalism; anyone can set up a news website or a blog, but it is the ones which are accurate and reliable which will – in the end – win out.

There’s a great excerpt from the book here.

As Barack Obama cruised to victory in the American presidential election this week, the global news media celebrated the result with headlines such as ‘One Man Changes Entire Nation’ (Daily News, New York), and ‘Historic First; Fulfilment of a Dream’ (The Houston Chronicle).

In the aftermath, the impact of the media on this seminal election deserves some analysis. Were the media merely reflecting public support for Obama or were they, in fact, an important factor in fomenting his support base?

Was coverage of the elections biased?

Whilst I too am thrilled by Obama’s win, and hope that he will be able to deliver on his promise to bring change to America, I think that there could be a small grain of truth in Republican blogs such as this one, which argues that media support for Obama made John McCain’s task all the more difficult.  As this study details, coverage of McCain was far less positive than that of Obama in the run up to the election. And, according to award-winning media commentator Evan Thomas, media bias can add 5% on to vote totals.  

What is more, and with parallels to the coverage of John F. Kennedy in the 1960 American election, Obama’s celebrity seems – at times – to have overshadowed a more detailed analysis of his policies by the media.

Yet Reuters, on the other hand, claim that media bias was “largely unseen” in the presidential race in this article.

This subject desperately needs to be studied in more detail, because it has a bearing upon the fundamental principle of objectivity in journalism. In the words of foreign correspondent Christine Amanpour, journalistic objectivity means “giving all sides an equal hearing”. Whilst I am pleased about this week’s election result, I am not convinced that the media achieved this in their coverage.

Visiting the Home Office with Danny Shaw (BBC Home Affairs Correspondent) last week was an incredibly revealing insight into the symbiotic relationship between journalism and PR.

It is a relationship which is commonly oversimplified, with damaging effects. As journalists we are taught not to give much weight to the words of PRs, who have vested interests and their own agendas. Journalism, we believe, is about revealing the truth and increasing public access to information, whilst PR is about spinning the news, obscuring information, and covering up scandal.

Yet both industries are far more complicated than this. Government Press Offices have a public service element in the same way as newspapers do; one of the primary functions of the Home Office Press Office is to inform the public about what the Government is doing in their name. And, as Civil Servants, Government Press Officers are duty-bound to present information in an unpartisan way – which cannot be said about most newspapers. Naturally, their work always endeavours to show the Home Office in a positive light, but a healthy dose of journalistic scepticism is all that is needed to see through this.

On the other side of the coin, anyone who has read Nick Davies’ candid exposé of journalism, Flat Earth News, will be aware that journalistic ideals – even at the most well-respected publications – can go astray. Journalists too may have vested interests, partiality or, quite simply, encounter logistical constraints which impede honest and accurate reporting. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent deals with this theme for the American media.

Rather, then, than blindly distrusting PRs it is perhaps better to look at all sources with a critical eye – whether they come from PRs or from fellow journalists.

Bloomberg Offices

My journalism class recently visited the Bloomberg offices in London to find out about Bloomberg’s approach to news reporting and the career opportunities they offer. Whilst it seems as if all of us were impressed by the spectacular Norman Foster architecture, the free food available all day in the huge ‘office pantry’ and the AmEx cards dished out to journalists to cover work-related expenses, several of my classmates later expressed criticism about the corporate atmosphere and lack of journalistic creativity in the offices. Others expressed concern that Bloomberg reporters are perhaps unable to take a genuinely critical look at the businesses they write about because their revenue, after all, comes from those very same businesses – through their subscriptions for the pricey Bloomberg terminals.

I disagree with these criticisms. Whilst reporting on financial and business news is of course not of interest to everyone, these types of criticism seem to place expectations upon Bloomberg that are beyond its remit – to provide the fastest and most accurate business news to investors and traders to enable them to do their jobs. More creative, analytical or investigative journalism is of no interest to Bloomberg’s clients, who simply need to know what is going on as quickly as possible. This, dare I say, represents journalism in its purest form – the simple provision of information – albeit for a corporate audience.

As for the charge that Bloomberg reporters cannot criticise businesses and business practices, this too is outside of their remit. Journalists at Bloomberg are not there to act as a business watchdog but to act as an information provider, as unromantic an interpretation of journalism as this may be.

Finally, part of Bloomberg’s philosophy is, they say, to make their stories easy enough “for your great-aunt to understand”. Translating financial concepts and business jargon into clear and concise stories accessible to the general public takes intelligence, talent and creativity – though of a different sort than the traditional, literary (and perhaps short-sighted) sense of the word.