The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 16 - Everything is Broken

Journalists learn, usually within a few months, that nothing works in this world, that there is the ideal, and the real. The controversy occurs when the journalist reports the real to people who are in the business of promoting the ideal. Police departments and journalists often clash over half full and half empty glasses. Example; Over a perod of two years nine women are raped in a section of the city. The women provide similar descriptions of the subject. A story about a serial rapist. Simple enough to write. But how did you find out about this story? Unfortunately you discovered it only after the third victim had been raped - because the police didn't trust you. It is a silly thing where a paramilitary organization (the police) just don't believe the media should be able to write about their activities. In other words, it is childish. But the cops will keep stories from the media that the public has a right to know. So you have to stay on them. The crazy thing is that many members of the general public believe the police should be able to work without having to answer questions from the news media. One of the great urban myths, promoted by Hollywood in hundreds of movies is that reporters somehow always manage to screw up police investigations, so they have to be kept at an arm's length at all times. How many movies contain a final scene where a reporter is punched in the mouth - for comic relief?

That scene occurs only in the movies. More often than not, a crime reporter is on the phone all day with victims of crime who do not believe the police are doing a good enough job of locating the perpetrator. That is not to say that cops are bad. In fact, quite the opposite. The police investigator has a much more difficult and dangerous job than the police reporter. He or she does as well with the investigation as possible. Most of the time, they don't like crime reporters. Our relationship is broken, and can not be repaired. It has become a tradition. A permanent thing.

*****

Sooner or later most reporters meet up with an editor who hates them. Mine was one of these "community news" types. He believed that reporters should stick to reporting the news in the community, almost at a grassroots level, covering all the town meetings in all the towns, sitting in at the historical commission listening to why Mr. Brown had to use cedar shingles instead of tar ones on the roof of his colonial home - just wouldn't be right. Or why houses on the main road through town could only be painted white with black trim - or it wouldn't look right. Then there's the selectman's meeting, which in one town I covered might result in fist fights on the steps of town hall.

But I stuck to it, attending every public meeting in at least four towns for six months straight. I almost became a town government junkie. You know the type who reads every word in their badly written town paper and can tell you who has requested a permit to build an addition to their house?

I wouldn't say it really got to me. But I did learn some things. Most of these towns were being run very poorly by a bunch of knuckleheads who knew next to nothing about how to manage a budget, a town, even a meeting. It was one of those things where the talent left town every morning for their jobs in Boston. And the C student locals stayed home, with a lot of time on their hands, time they used to screw up the works. Now that doesn't sound very kind does it? I should show more empathy for these folks, shouldn't I? No. Believe me, town government junkies were running these towns and running them badly. I had dozens of examples where their lack of knowledge of town government was costing each taxpayer hundreds of dollars extra every year.

I wrote the story. It was a straight shot, without blaming anyone. One of those stories where you put the facts out there and let the reader make up his mind. It was a feature story leaning heavily to the straight news side.

But my editor didn't like it. What was not to like; it was all based on facts. Well, according to this editor, a story like mine could result in a lot of angry readers, and it did not present a very good image of those towns. Was I in some kind of publicity job for these towns? Well, yes I was. My editor saw reporters as journalism ambassadors to help increase circulation of the paper. That could not happen if we insisted on writing the truth about these towns. The story didn't fly.

But town government is broken. It is not working. We have allowed too many fools to run for public office. So I guess we are the people who broke town government.

*****

The rules have changed. Used to be you went out on a news story and you interviewed the main subjects of the story and sometimes you wrote notes into your notebook in shorthand and sometimes you taped the interview. But one of the things you never did was read the completed story to the subject of the story before it appeared in the newspaper.

You didn't do it because the main subject in your story might have changed his mind since he talked to you, and now he doesn't want his opinions to be known by the public. It's too late, of course. You got the story. But what if he calls and wants you to read the completed story to him over the phone so he can get an idea of how it will look in the paper the following day?

The standard line to this request was, I am sorry, I am not your publicity guy, I am a reporter. You will see the story when you read the paper. That was always my answer. I never once read a story to someone over the phone before it was published. But it wasn't just me; it was all journalists. I knew editors who would fire a reporter on the spot if he learned that the reporter was allowing access to a story to outside sources prior to the publication of that story.

Well that's all over now. Today, reporters will do anything to get the story first, even if that means a promise to read the story to the subject of the story before it becomes print. This turns the journalist into a publicist, helping the subject of the story to back out of things he or she has said and perverting the reality of news. Television is even worse. News makers are allowed to submit questions beforehand and the reporter has to stick to the questions on that list. Further, in television, more so than in newspapers, news subjects are quite often allowed to see their appearance before it airs.

Journalism is broken.