Given that it extracts from another page that discusses "how to improve religion coverage", the little commentary he adds and the extracts he has pulled make for a mind-set that should be considered far more widely - perhaps even to a little Catholic Church somewheres in Texas?
Scott Libin starts out with the premise -
I don't believe there are two sides to every story.
In fact, it's hard to think of a single important issue journalists cover that has only two sides. We just tend to stop looking after that. It's harder still to imagine a challenge facing newsroom leaders to which there are only two possible solutions. Sometimes the best alternative is the third or fourth or fourteenth -- if we bother to find it. That's why, as journalists and as leaders, we need to get over bipolar thinking. It leaves too many important ideas unexplored.
I think that he is being just a little too critical of journalists here, but he is right.
Where I think the fault lies, and believe me it is common to NZ politicians as well, is in the idea that people (that's us folks) are too stupid to effectively hold more than a "yes/no" idea.
A first rate illustration of this is coming up in NZ in the next couple of years or so. There is a petition out for a binding referendum to be held at the next elections come October. The question sought is "I am in favour of changing NZ's flag" followed "Yes/no".
Well now, that is fair enough I suppose. I will probably say "No" just for the fish but that is not what I am talking about.
The point here is that this will be followed at some point in the future by another referendum giving voters the choice between the current NZ Ensign and "the new flag" which will probably be chosen by some learned and politically correct committee whose primary aim in life is to spread the blame for their decision as far and wide as they are possibly able.
So, at this final referendum we will again face a "yes/no" question, put rather as "new/old", but again reduced to the simplistic "only one idea at a time" principle.
So, to return to the criticism of the journalists, it must be extremely frustrating for a journalist who has researched a subject well, has a good line in logic, and a real point to his story. He (or she, we must be pc :D ) askes the first couple of questions and then the interviewee wakes up to where things are headed. From that point onward the communication stops. Every question is bent toward "what the politician wants to discuss" rather than the line of the question.
Before the last election there was an excellent example of this when one of our "leading news readers" John Campbell was interviewing Helen Clark live on prime news. His third question was right out of the blue and centred on the coming publication of a book on genetically modified crops and experiments in NZ. The book made accusations of government complicity and error in the growing of GM crops in circumstances that broke the law.
Could he have done it any other way? I doubt it. Did Clark accept the "unscripted questions? Not after the first. IT is the one and only time I have ever seen her lose her temper. NOT a pretty sight.
So, I think that journalists - the good ones anyway - do their best with what they got,...
No comments:
Post a Comment