But what if they’re right? The media are most often accused of three things: bias, sensationalism and negativity.
Bias. Everyone leans a certain way politically. Ideally, that wouldn’t affect the way a reporter covered a city council meeting or a police news conference. But to tell the truth, I’ve probably worked with 10 times more liberal-leaning journalists than conservative-leaning journalists over the past three decades. The profession attracts people with an affinity for underdogs. That has to have some impact on the stories we choose to do and the ones we don’t.
Sensationalism. It depends how you define it. If we talk to the relatives of a murder victim, are we doing it to make money? I hope we’re there because we’re trying help the community grieve together. But let’s face it, that story is going to be well-read so maybe it will make more money in some click-based, page-view algorithm that I’ll never understand.
Negativity. We don’t make cars crash. We don’t bomb civilians. The world can be an ugly place and these things won’t stop if we ignore them. On the other hand, I haven’t met many reporters who would rather cover a parade than a murder trial. Darker stories seem, by their nature, more important. So maybe we are negative.
But I’ve already fallen into the trap of thinking in terms of “us” and “them.” There should be no distinction. It’s here where the media are their own worst enemies. We tend to think we’re infallible because we’re doing God’s work. But if we want more people on our side, we could do a much better job of showing the public what we do, why we do it and how we do it. We like to crow about open courts, but what about open newsrooms?
Maybe we should trust people enough to let them in on the process. To boil it down to one example, if the police shoot an Indigenous man and we decide to mention his race in coverage, we should tell people why we thought it was relevant and maybe admit that we agonize over such decisions. It might not stop the haters but it would at least give “them” a chance to understand “us.”
Cam Fuller, “Do people really hate us and if so, why?”, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 2018-03-03.
June 3, 2020
QotD: From “the media’s” point of view
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