Callimachus Tells Us About The Reporter’s Life
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in MediaPromoted from the comments section of a post about Joe Wilson.
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A great part of a reporters’ life � even a small-town daily newspaper reporter’s � consists of nailing down confirmations of things he’s been told off the record, or heard second-hand.
Usually the person you have in mind is your editor. He won’t let you run your story about the county commissioners planning to sell the old farts in the senior home for rendering into cat food, because your only source for that is the janitor in the cat food cannery.
So you call the county commissioner, and he says “I can’t comment on that.�
There are ways around this. One dear little old lady I worked with used to say, at that point, “If you did have a comment, what would it be?� And half the time the source started talking. I swear to God, they were that dense.
Another reporter used to harrange them with, “If I print this tomorrow, would I be wrong?� That is gray. The person on the other end of the phone can say, “no,� and, while not confirming it, confirms it.
It’s a big, elaborate, unpleasant chapter in the insiders’ book of journalism. Here’s one I used to use when I was a cop reporter in the ’80s. There’s been a shooting. You think it was a fatal shooting (a dead body pushes the story out to page 1). But the cops won’t tell you anything.
So you call the hospital, where the victim likely was taken. Now, the nursing shift supervisor isn’t supposed to tell you anything important. There are rules about that. But if you ask her, “what was the time of death of that shooting victim from up on Price Street?� that’s the kind of routine detail she can release, and there’s a chance she’ll give it to you.
Bingo, confirmation.
Or, if I knew we had a victim but the police wouldn’t release the name, I might call someone who worked on the case and ask, “that guy who got killed on Price Street? How do you spell his name?� Act like I had the name and just wanted to get it spelled right.
Of course, if his name is “Smith� or he’s not really dead, you can look like a snake and an idiot. But nobody ever insulted a journalist by calling him a snake and an idiot.
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July 16th, 2005 at 7:54 am
“But nobody ever insulted a journalist by calling him a snake and an idiot.”
Have reporters started to internalize the general feeling about them (brainless TV egos and/or amoral potentially traitorous bottom feeders), in the same way that lawyers have? Most of my friends who are lawyers have the best lawyer jokes, just to show that they know them, and are ok with being scum. Did I say ‘friends’? Anyway,
It seems, based on the articles that reporters write about journalism, that the profession still, bless its black little heart, has a heroic self image. Is that all tongue in cheek? Or is it just that the sort of person who writes an article about the “soul of journalism” is completely out of touch as a general rule?
July 16th, 2005 at 8:41 am
It seems, based on the articles that reporters write about journalism, that the profession still, bless its black little heart, has a heroic self image. Is that all tongue in cheek? Or is it just that the sort of person who writes an article about the “soul of journalism� is completely out of touch as a general rule?
I don’t (yet) have any personal experience with newsroom journalists, but Jay Rosen, professor and former department chair of Journalism at NYU, does. Over at his blog, PressThink (another of my must-reads), he has an ongoing series - “Journalism Is Itself A Religion,” “Deep Throat, J-School and Newsroom Religion,” and “‘When I’m Reporting, I’m A Citizen Of The World’” - that I think will prove very helpful in answering your question.
July 16th, 2005 at 10:58 am
It’s probably me who’s out of touch. I’ve been working in the sausage factory too long. And especially since 9/11, the mass of journalists I see and interact with have been magnetically drawn to the Chomsky-Michael Moore pole of U.S. politics and I haven’t.
July 16th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
There are ways around this. One dear little old lady I worked with used to say, at that point, “If you did have a comment, what would it be?� And half the time the source started talking. I swear to God, they were that dense.
That’s just priceless.
July 18th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Gahd this is depressing.
Tell me, then. Suppose a source is bound by rules or law not to comment — to do his or her best to neither confirm nor deny. Lots of situations like that from your hospital desk to the Oval Office.
So Nurse Rove answers the hospital phone and you ask about Medicade policy and then as a “by the way” sort of change of topic you ask: “Oh, did Joe Wilson’s widow use his name or her maiden name?”
And Nurse Rove says: “So, you heard that he died, huh? Well, I’m not allowed to comment on that — I’ve probably said too much already. Anyhow, if you have anymore Medicare questions, call. Gotta go. Bye.”
What does that mean to a reporter? Honestly? I don’t see that as confirmation — I really don’t see that. I _DO_ see how tone of voice and rhythm and all could convey more or less shading to the topic. But I don’t see how a journalist would be willing to go out and hang his name on a report with no more “confirmation” than a source’s echo-statement showing that the implications of the question are clear.
What are the payoff/penalty schemes that would lead to a journalist risking being wrong so badly?
It seems to me that the payoff — getting the scoop on the “widow Wilson” - - must be hugely more consequential than the penality for false reports and –in this example — premature obituaries. Would a reporter ever be fined a day or week’s pay for screwing up such a report? Is there any penalty at all?
Should there be?