August 25, 2003
How to not beat up on 'the press'
A lot of people are mad at the media. Some conservatives are constantly accusing them of being liberal sycophants. Some of us on the liberal side are constantly accusing them of being conservative sycophants. Some people talk as if the whole lot of them were a bunch of liars.
But the thing is that even the media has many different faces and aspects. It isn't any more fair to lump them all together than it is to lump all Muslims or Christians together.
I got to see some of them at work, up close and personal, in what were very stressful circumstances. Traveling with a presidential campaign is a lot of pressure, even if you're enjoying it, and I really enjoyed traveling with Governor Dean's campaign.
Laser Focus
One of the first things that came across from many of the traveling press while they were working is a quality of binary attention. It's full on, or full off. I noticed it most when interacting with someone, and they're talking like the only thing happening is the conversation they're having with you, and then when they need to be looking elsewhere you're part of the 'everything else' they're resolutely shutting out. It's like a switch.
This habit of shutting things out could almost seem unfriendly, if it weren't both a courtesy and a necessity.
It's a courtesy because you're traveling with a plane full of strangers that you're with all day. Unless you're in the bathroom with the door shut, you're always in public, in tight quarters. It helps for those perfect strangers to be able to erect these virtual privacy screens of selective attention. And then if you want to interact with people it's okay, and if you don't there's no pressure to do so.
I wouldn't have expected it, but it makes them in some ways a very undemanding presence. An important skill to have if your job depends on finding things out from people who might otherwise be very uncomfortable around you. I got a little taste of this, seeing a few people who'd been bubbly and happy to talk me get this horrified look at the sight of a tape recorder. Too many people worry that you'll abuse their trust, and you also have to not take that personally.
Their focus also allows them to make tight deadlines, to work in noisy, distracting environments that are an assault on all your senses. How else can you get a story written and filed in an hour or less? Or pick one impression out of a multitude, follow it enough to turn it into a coherent account, and try to figure out which impression would be the most interesting to people who aren't there.
Because their job is to be the eyes and ears for people who can't be there, but need to know at least some of what's happening. What really is important to tell everybody about an experience like a campaign?
I got hours worth of tape in the space of about a day, and it took around an hour to transcribe a few minutes worth of an interview with Ms. Franke-Ruta. There's so much to sort through, it's overwhelming.
Lonely Crowd
One thing about traveling under pressure, in constant company, is that it magnifies the absence of friends or loved ones. This weekend felt like it lasted more than a week, but it felt like I hadn't seen my boyfriend in over a month.
There were so many experiences and new impressions that the subjective experience of time gets stretched out.
Again, I had a great time. And still I've never in my life been so deeply grateful and relieved to have someone come pick me up. It felt wonderful to see someone who knows me, to whom I don't have to introduce myself.
Tiny World
One member of the campaign press said that it was hard to orient yourself in a new town when you travel so much. That you could almost forget where you were sometimes. And really, how do you know who to talk to?
The current media climate seems to magnify the presence and opinion of a relatively few people. From the perspective of someone reading the newspaper or watching the national news, however, it makes events seem distant. It appears as though there's only a tiny minority of people whose opinions and actions matter.
But it seems clear how that could happen if you have to sort through the thousands of people that might be present at an event or living in a city you're visiting, figure out who to talk to, and try to get something newsworthy in the time allotted.
It seems that a reasonable way to do that would be to collect a number of contacts through your organization and personal experience. People who had vetted credentials from other reliable sources. And then you get to know them, what to expect of them. It would make your work go much smoother.
Issues and Solutions
Some members of the media do abuse people's trust, twist what they say. Some pry into things that really should be private, things that are hurtful to reveal, and harmless to conceal. Some editors are very biased in what they choose to print. Some pundits are either too agenda driven, or too timid to properly aid the public in the act of interpreting and discussing events. And many media parent corporations have an agenda of consolidation that serves our interests very poorly.
But one journalist I spoke with got the task of explaining to me what an ombudsman is. (Though it was a fair exchange because I got to explain to her why people bother with blogs.) To be honest, I'd simply never been interested to find out what the word meant before.
So, it turns out that an ombudsman is supposed to be sort of an internal conscience for a media organization. A news critic, an ethicist.
And it could just be that instead of wailing on the entire media establishment, it might be more constructive to take on the role of ombudsman of our own accord. To be concise and specific with any criticism. To avoid broad indictments of an entire class of people, many of whom work very hard.
With a blog, we can get responses from a wide range of readers. And very instant, and personal feedback. And it seems that one of the problems with the media's level of connectedness with the public is a lack of this kind of feedback. Most criticism (constructive or otherwise) is from other members of their profession, and the kinds of comments leveled at them from viewers or readers are often simply too broad or abusive to even begin to be useful.
It seems that it might be far more useful to engage them in an active and nuanced dialogue. The spirit of the progressive attitude towards government is that citizens can't give up their responsibility to participate and expect good things to come of it. It seems like a valuable idea to apply to our interaction with the press.
Impressions
It was a real pleasure speaking with the members of the press who were aboard the Grassroots Express. They were courteous, diligent, and engaging. I wish I'd gotten to speak with all of them, but there just wasn't time.
And from now on, I can see myself taking significant exception to anyone saying that 'the press' are inherently problematic and then follow that up with a meaningless generalization.
Posted by natasha at August 25, 2003 11:59 PM | TrackBack