the_fantastic_ms_fox (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2007-05-08 10:08 pm
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2007-05-08 10:08 pm(no subject)
So we sent off a letter to the CFS last week. And now we're on the MacLean's website.
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2007-05-08 10:08 pm
no subject
Maclean's responds
(Anonymous) 2007-05-13 07:39 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Maclean's responds
The tendency of what used to be called "investigative" journalism, in recent years, to obsess over finding & reporting both sides of any debate, both worries and upsets me. It turns every potentially controversial news story into a banal game of word-against-word, no matter how unevenly matched the words might be.
The SFSS has pointed out, with quite a bit of evidence, that the CFS is crooked and cultlike, and is trying hard to break away? A large number of other student societies agree, but lack the clout & resources to act on such a claim? That ought to be the story. But no, it wouldn't be neutral; and so equal space and emphasis must be allocated to a spokesperson from the CFS who repeats, "No we're not!" in a variety of unsubstantiated ways.
This is exactly the same journalistic emasculation* which is responsible for keeping alive the idea that climate change is controversial -- because there have to be two sides to the story, right?
Imagine the following news report, whose similarities to the one in Maclean's are, I assure you, entirely coincidental:
Horatio McGillicuddy and his family are attempting to resign from the Church of the Utopian Cabbage, citing corruption, bullying, and cultlike behaviour -- allegations which also surfaced last year from several other families, none of whom ultimately left the Church. In the last two months the McGillicuddys have stopped paying tithes to the Church, which typically demands thousands of dollars annually, and filed papers announcing their intention to depart immediately. However, a Church spokesperson says that the McGillicuddys' resignation is not valid because they failed to give six months' notice to the Grand Slaw Council. The Church points out that its rules allow it to spend six months presenting gifts and candy to Mr. McGillicuddy's three children so that they can make a more informed decision. The spokesperson also vehemently denied Mr. McGillicuddy's charges of corruption, saying, "We never did any of that."
Is it fair reporting to give equal treatment to both sides of this issue? What about here:
Today the rain fell over most of downtown Vancouver, causing most pedestrians to open umbrellas and step over the puddles. However, Mr. Æthelstan Nosegay, a downtown busker, has compiled a set of arguments showing the contrary. "The puddles were mostly generated by passing cars," he said, "throwing water up over the kerb. There's no real evidence that this water originally came from the sky."
Yes, it's important to give the CFS an opportunity to rebut the SFSS. But after investigating both sides of the issue, it's at least as important to evaluate them fairly. That honest appraisal is where journalistic neutrality & integrity truly lie: setting aside both personal and editorial bias to give both apologia a voice, and then finding in favour of the stronger argument. It's not about simply presenting both of them side by side like an eleventh-grade three-paragraph essay.
The journalist, not the reader, is the one who's done the research; the journalist is the one with an obligation to judge the results. (The reader's job ought to be evaluating whether she agrees with the journalist's conclusion, and clearly articulating why or why not.) Sometimes both sides really are quite evenly matched, and a good investigative journalist will explicitly say so ... but not in this case. What a disappointing article.
*If I may be allowed to use the word in a pejorative sense.
Re: Maclean's responds
There is no feeling, I can now confidently report, quite like being woken from a nap, still half mired in a dream of dissolution, by a friend who reports, "You know that comment you made on my blog last week? Maclean's just linked to it with a rebuttal."
Oh, I thought, and for about another six subjective years that's all I thought. Oh. Eventually Sasha and I agreed that it might be a good idea to screen my comment for a day or two until I'd figured out what on earth to think next.
I'm flattered by Erin Millar's response. Frankly I'm flattered that she even noticed what I wrote last week -- and also a little embarrassed. She didn't deserve to be dismissed so haughtily, or to be compared to the American right-wing science media. I'd have been quite hurt if anyone accused me of such a thing, and I hope she also reads that I'm sorry for the hurt I undoubtedly caused her.
Have you ever ranted loudly to your friends in a crowded restaurant, only to have someone walk over twenty minutes later and say, "Excuse me, but I'm the person you were just ranting about, and I'd like to take issue with some of the things you said?" That's about the position I'm in right now. I want to take responsibility for my words, but I also want to contextualize them as a late-night, end-of-the-work-week1 rant, which I never imagined would draw Ms. Millar's attention.
I'll stand by the philosophical point I raised in my post, that journalistic neutrality is too often interpreted to mean presenting both sides of every issue equally, instead of making an impartial judgment between them ... but honestly, Ms. Millar's original article was not a great example of it. I may have started out by expressing disappointment with her article, but I quickly segued into criticisms which ought to have been leveled much more squarely at contemporary journalism as a whole.
For every genre of writing has its formulas, the structural cliches into which a writer will fall if they stop paying attention even for a moment. I believe that this false neutrality has become enough of a formula within the genre of investigative journalism that anyone writing in the field is likely to fall into it from time to time. This is one of the ways that disorganization tends to manifest among investigative journalists, just as in the field of science fiction, it tends to show up as stock villains and derivative aliens. It takes not only a very good writer, but also a consistent lack of deadlines (and since when has journalism had that luxury?) to avoid formulaic writing day after day. I certainly couldn't do better.
I'd been wondering for a while just what had been bothering me about the rhetoric of investigative journalism in recent years. 'Twas only while commenting on Ms. Millar's article that I finally figured it out -- not because she flagrantly abused journalistic neutrality, but because she let just enough of the genre conventions slip through.
And now I'm going to stop commenting again, lest this message also turn into a rant.
1Yes, Wednesday is the end of my work week.
(Hurrah for gratuitous italics!)
Re: Maclean's responds
(Anonymous) 2007-05-18 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)Anyways, I appreciated your comment. It made me realize that I had been a little overparanoid about representing the CFS side from being called a student union hater so many times.
Ah, the life of a journalist.
-Erin, Maclean's (Ooooooo!) :)
Hello... Maclean's?
Please understand that in this Livejournal, I am speaking for myself and not as an Executive of the Simon Fraser Student Society, much less a representative of the Student Society.
Forgive the typos and meandering posts: most of my writing here is stream-of-consciousness.
I will go talk to my co-workers before commenting further.
- Sasha