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Welcome to Be a Journalist.
I'm Dave Poulson and
in this lesson we will discuss some common obstacles to reporting.
Now many reporting challenges come from simple misunderstandings.
There's an old joke about a reporter who wrote that a fire at a local
farm killed 2003 piglets.
Now that's a big farm.
That's a rural disaster.
But when the farmer saw the story, he got mad and called the reporter up and
said, you dummy, I didn't say that I lost 2003 piglets.
It was two sows, and three piglets.
Or how about the journalist who reported that a bank robbery witness
said the crooks escaped in a brown car.
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So these are funny and probably untrue, but
they show how easy it is to make mistakes even innocently.
But when journalists make mistakes, even the innocent ones or
those that are not their fault, everyone knows about it.
We publish and
broadcast our mistakes for everyone to see and we even sign our names to them.
And because of that, our credibility suffers for it.
So we want to carefully meet these reporting challenges.
Here are some others.
Witnesses of news events may simply recollect them incorrectly.
And you have no control over that.
There's no ill intent here.
We all make mistakes.
Particularly if we're stressed.
And being part of a news event is stressful.
Heck, getting interviewed by a journalist is plenty stressful,
particularly if it's your first time.
That's why journalists double check facts and use multiple sources.
They make sure that what they thought was said really was what the source said.
And even if it really was what that source said, was it what they intended to say?
Did they say what they meant?
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Here's an example.
Victims of scams are often embarrassed to talk about how they lost money
in a dubious scheme.
They feel kind of foolish for falling for it.
But explaining how they were duped can help other people escape that same fate.
That's a powerful card to play when dealing with people
reluctant to be interviewed.
And it works, because it's true.
A big part of our job is warning people of the dangers that are out there.
Now, laziness is another reporting obstacle, and
I don't mean laziness of the sort I mean laziness of the reporter.
It's easy for a source to avoid a lazy reporter.
When a reporter sends someone an email with a question
that source can simply ignore it.
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Still not working?
Show up at their office or at their home.
Convince them that the only way you're going away
is if you get what you came for.
A good reporter overcomes their own natural reluctance to be persistent.
You can be politely persistent.
Without being pushy.
That said, sometimes you need to be pushy.
Sometimes a source will just dig in their heels and refuse to release information.
And that's a tough challenge.
If it's a government official sitting on public information
you might seek answers with the help of laws designed to make sure
that public information is indeed made public.
Now these laws vary dramatically by country, and even within the same country.
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Another approach is to simply report the truth.
Keep asking those questions and
keep reporting truthfully if someone refuses to answer them.
Often that generates pressure for the source to finally say something.
Now another challenge is that reporters cover so
many different things that they can't be expert in all of them.
So, if you're writing about, say, education and you typically report on
transportation, you may not fully understand the jargon of your sources, or
the issues that they are talking about, and
believe me those education people can talk a lot of jargon.
In fact, we all do, everyone does within their own field.
And that works within our own communities but
we're trying to explain things to people outside those communities.
We have to cut through that jargon.
Now reporters can overcome this deficiency by taking specialized workshops,
or other training opportunities.
Some of them maybe even get another degree so
they can better report on a particular topic.
That they're specializing in.
But mostly, mostly they overcome the lack of specialized knowledge
by getting thrown into the deep end of the pool of new story.
And struggling a big until they learn to swim in new waters.
And before they know it, they have good expertise on a number of diverse subjects.
Yet another challenge is simply access.
We can't all ask questions of star athletes, famous movie stars, and
powerful officials.
That access may depend upon who we work for, the clout of our organization,
or even our individual brand or
previous body of work we've built up across many publications.
And finally, the lack of time and
the pressure to produce quickly is a big reporting hurdle.
When you report fast, you can get sloppy.
And with fewer editors around these days,
there are fewer people to back stop any mistakes.
So resist that pressure to sacrifice accuracy for speed.
Your reputation and the reputation of you employer is at stake.
Perhaps the most significant barrier to reporting is trust.
Guess what?
People lie, for any number of reasons.
Just because they say it, doesn't make it true.
Just because it's on the Internet, doesn't make it true.
That's why reporters use multiple sources and double check facts.
But it works both ways.
If you're sloppy or simply bad at your job, people won't trust you.
Joanne GerstnerSports Journalist in Residence
Jeremy SteeleSpecialist
David PoulsonInstructor
Eric FreedmanInstructor
Joe GrimmInstructor
Lucinda D. DavenportDirector & Professor
