Author, journalist, and broadcaster Peter Laufer published
his book Slow News with the Press in
2014. Laufer provides readers with an examination of modern-day news
consumption and creation. Considering the world we live in today--instant news,
fast food, immediate gratification--it is important to take a step back to
survey the information being presented to us. What is the validity of any piece
of news? How do we determine what is “fake news?” What about accuracy? What
is the true value of this constant stream of news? Today we are sharing with
you an excerpt from Laufer’s book, Slow
News. The excerpt, “Rule 9: Avoid Echo Chamber Reporting”, analyzes the
meaning of journalism and the various bits of information introduced to us in our everyday
lives attempting to pass as verifiable news.
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"Rule 9: Avoid Echo Chamber Reporting"
By Peter Laufer
All
journalism is investigative. If what is purported to be a news report is not
investigative, it is merely clerical work.
The New Republic’s critic Stanley
Kauffmann famously said about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, “This isn’t writing, it’s research.” He was wrong,
of course, but it was a witty paraphrase of a famous claim against the work of
Jack Kerouac by Capote: “This isn’t writing, it’s typing.” These exchanges of
insults make me think about stories presented as news that aren’t.
Remember
in this era of Facebook and Twitter that Facebook updates and tweets from
newsmakers are not news. They may be information, but that’s not news. News,
since we were cavemen drawing on our cave walls, requires an intermediary: the
journalist. If the caveman who whacked the mammoth came home and scrawled his
own experience on his cave wall, that was autobiography. If another caveman was
along on the hunt, watched the kill, came home, and recorded what he saw on the
wall, that was journalism. Sometimes the newsmaker and the journalist can be
one and the same, but that requires both a rare news event and rare reporting
talent.
As
for non-news, the worst offenders are news organizations that print or
broadcast verbatim announcements from public relations agencies. There is
nothing wrong with accepting material from PR functionaries as background for
stories. But to stuff such propaganda as is into the news pages or a newscast
is scandalous, the scandal made more egregious only by those print and
broadcast businesses who completely prostitute themselves and sell the
opportunity for self-promoters to appear as if they and their causes (usually
commercial) were legitimate news.
Almost
as bad are the lazy reporters and editors who accept information without
checking it and without advancing the story by reporting further developments.
Crime statistics from the police are examples. Earnings reports from a company
are others. An account of a battle by the military of one side of the conflict
is still another example.
That’s
not journalism, that’s stenography—without at least verification, it’s just
stenography. All news reporting should be investigative reporting. The latter
term is redundant.
There
is a difference between information dumping and knowledge building. In today’s
heavily mediated world we’re awash with information. We can Google anything and
find factoids. We’re bombarded with information via the Internet and our mobile
phones and other so-called New Media even while the relics of Old Media
continue to thrive: books, for just one example.
The
Slow News rule is to seek information that builds knowledge. Thorough reporting
about important world news developments or about news that interests us or
about news that is particularly crucial to our lives builds knowledge, makes us
smarter, better citizens, and makes us much more fun to hang out with.
Beware
of the Big Story Syndrome. When mobs of reporters flock to one story the result
is needless repetition. Think about the hordes of writers and photographers
waiting for the Chilean miners to come out of the bowels of the earth alive and
well in October 2010. It was a thrilling positive news story, of course, full
of human pathos and redemption. But think also of all the news stories that
were going unreported or underreported worldwide all those days the miners were
underground because of the resources that were shipped to Chile.
When
the world’s attention is riveted on one Big Story, it’s a good time to troll
obscure news outlets to find intriguing news pushed from the front pages by the
Big Story.
Skillful
media manipulators know how to take advantage of distraction. That’s why
government and businesses tend to announce bad news when few are paying
attention. Saturday afternoon is a good choice for obscurity. The weekday news
reading/watching/listening routine is disrupted by the leisure of the weekend.
The audience is at the beach or at the theater or sleeping late. The bad news
slips with ease quickly into the ether, reported but often undigested. In 2011,
for example, on the afternoon of Saturday, August 13 (which in Italy is more of
a Saturday than any other because it is smack in the middle of the summer
holiday period), the appointments of presidents and commissioners of the
Italian public research agencies were announced on the Ministry of Education’s
website. The editor of the Italian section of Scientific American, Marco Cattaneo, called this choice for a date
“carboneria,” that is, “it looks like
the news was meant to be kept hidden.”
The
Big Story Syndrome can distract the public just as thoroughly as a premeditated
maneuver to hide bad news on the weekend. Seeks news that teaches something
new.
The Slow News rule:
All journalism worth your while should be investigative journalism, and
sometimes it must be actively sought.
Laufer, Peter. Slow News. Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 2014. Print. A Manifesto for
the Critical
News Consumer.