I suppose I haven’t really spent any time to sit down and write what I’ve been doing for the past couple of months, although casual and regular readers will probably know I’m in journalism school.
I finished my first term back in early December, and since then I’ve been interning at the Langley Advance and Coquitlam Now newspapers. This hasn’t given me a lot of time to really write or respond to comments.
I also visited Afghanistan in late September, early October, and I never got a chance to really share more than a few thoughts and impressions of the trip. I did want to take this opportunity to thank those who helped me with that experience. I don’t want to embarrass anybody by calling out their full name, but I’m sure you’ll recognize yours when you see it.
Dave, thanks for helping me when you heard about my opportunity. Tony, I appreciate your ongoing attention to the mission in Afghanistan and supporting my visit there. John, you’ve helped me to get through some of the self-doubt and fears about tackling this new occupation. And thanks to Mark for the assistance and the phone call before leaving to Afghanistan. I also appreciated the advice from those who had already been there.
Finally, thanks to Roy and Fred who really stepped up and made the trip possible.
Anyway, back to the headline of this blog entry, my newest National Post article is rather related to the Afghan story.
While Canadians were concerned about jobs, health care and the lagging economy, the opposition parties were busy pressing the federal government on the subject of Afghan detainee documents, according to an Ottawa Citizen analysis of question period transcripts from 2010.
The analysis shows the opposition asked more about Afghanistan, specifically about detainees, than any other subject in 2010. Although the Liberals also hounded the Tories on questions about the G8 and G20 summits and Rahim Jaffer, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois were absolutely overflowing with questions about Afghanistan.
This flies in the face of what public opinion polls say are the true concerns of Canadians, which relate mainly to the economy. Read More »
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Use the Journalism school to learn the craft but be careful to not get Stockholm syndrome and start thinking like the ” pack “.
It’s hard at times to resist the temptation to take a small screw up by someone in Politics and spin it into something significant when it actually deserves a mention on page 43 of the F section of a newspaper.
Just saying that when you get that ” gotcha ” feeling take the time to see if there is depth to it and significance.
A scoop or scooping the competition can be overwhelmingly tempting that even though a journalist might want to be fair and accurate the quick cheap shot is just too tempting.
Just general comments and I guess from my point of view as I would hope you can stay as fair and as balanced as you can be when reporting the news. When clearly doing an editorial or opinion piece you can let your personal views influence your reporting much more: I must admit I would find it difficult to actually be completely neutral in my writings, but then I’m not a journalist so I don’t have that responsibility.
Hope the above doesn’t sound too preachy or just stating the obvious.
I enjoy your writings even when I don’t agree with them or just half agree or agree completely: It varies LOL.
Oh, I should go to the actual article and read it since my comment is more about journalism in general.
Actually, it’s quite an interesting experience because many of the students are rather apolitical. I think part of that has to do with the fact they’re in their 20s, but also because I don’t believe people get into journalism to editorialize. Perhaps that simply comes later.
News judgment is certainly an important part of the news gathering system. The school of thought is to gather as much information as possible and then put it out there, allowing others to decide as to its value, but certainly you do see some information presented as being more important than other information, and that is often perceived as editorial bias, whether real or imagined.
I actually have a story about Afghanistan that I can tell regarding this “gotcha” fear if you want to personally email me.
But if you are curious as to how my journalism strays from my opinion, you can see here:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=adrian+macnair+langley+advance
One hazard is that when a journalist who is either on the Left or the Right in his personal opinions, or most of his/her editorials, writes a neutral ” just the facts ” news piece, the people who are his fans will accuse him of being disloyal to the Right or Left: The reading public is generally not very good at understanding the difference between personal opinion of the writer versus the writer trying to be as factual as possible even when the facts are opposite to his personal view.
The National Post article does seem to me to be more an opinion piece or editorial than just news reporting ….. Well, even in an editorial one would use real facts to support one’s argument and because it’s an editorial it doesn’t mean that it isn’t based on honest interpretation of facts but the weight of the facts are chosen to support an opinion in the way that any decent debater will use facts to his advantage.
Now, one could distinguish honest editorializing from dishonest editorializing when the writer knows that he is distorting the facts or just plain lying about facts: In this case we are into demagogy and propaganda or spin.
Well, I should clarify that the National Post writing I do is all opinion-based. I try to back it up with facts, but ultimately the opinions in the column are presented as such, and shouldn’t be interpreted in any way, shape or form as journalism.
The link I provided above, on the other hand, is only journalism. My opinion appears nowhere in the copy, nor would it be appropriate for a newspaper to supply opinion in news reporting.
I think for the most part it’s easy for journalists to separate news and opinion, particularly with local events. Murders, thefts, human interest stories are all easy subjects to remain neutral on, so the opinion of the reporter is unlikely to drift into the piece.
It’s when the subject is about politics that it might become more difficult. It’s also possible that some reporters reach for correlative material that aren’t actually related, such as a weather report that includes speculation about being tied to global warming. It’s simply not good journalism to speculate.
So, to be clear, my National Post work is all opinion-based, but has nothing to do with my career as a journalist.
Ah, good to know and there is a very legitimate place for opinion pieces and I read your articles in the Post as personal comment and editorials but it is certainly useful to have my impression confirmed as accurate.
I would also classify your National Post contributions to be of the honest kind. ( Just in case that wasn’t clear, as I often make comments of a general nature not directed at the person I am exchanging views with … I’m sure you understood this, but making it clear to others reading my comments just in case ).
Interesting comments by Jean, which I pretty well agree with.
” It’s simply not good journalism to speculate.”
Absolutely, but it apparently is OK if it is an opinion piece.
There seem to be three different genres here – journalism pieces like the Langley Advance (great piece about the dog trainer BTW), straight opinion pieces by people like Travers and Walkom, and then a gray area peopled by just about everyone else.
I really don’t have a problem with Travers stretching the facts. He’s an opinion writer, and he’s putting forth his opinion. What bugs me are so-called journalists like Steve Maher, Delacourt, Taber et al, who cannot put together a news story without extensive use of the conditional tense – would/could/might/perhaps.
The Globe has a name for this kind of journalism which escapes me at the moment but basically means the story is being reported from a particuar perspective. I’m interested as to whether this is taught at journalism school or whether there is a strict divide between opinion and reporting.
And then there’s the whole issue of unnamed sources/senior Liberals/high-ranking Tories used to validate the opinions expressed.
Hi Jad,
We are taught about the ethics of opinion in journalism, as well as sensationalizing or manufacturing stories, known as yellow journalism.
As for unnamed sources, it’s generally frowned upon, but with the Afghan war and cases where information and names are sensitive, it’s understandable to withhold the name of the person.
It can often be a news judgment call. Does the public need to know outweigh the importance of not being able to put an accountable name behind the story? There’s no simple answer.
Glad you liked the dog trainer story. I’ve found these little life stories interesting to write about.
The Globe and Mail has almost completely abandoned any pretense of objective reporting. See this post and the further links at the end:
‘Afstan and Canada’s National Whatever, or, “Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless”’
http://unambig.com/afstan-and-canadas-national-whatever-and-hopeless-hopeless-hopeless/
Mark
Ottawa