“Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience.”
So, there’s a platform to build on and a simple enough principal to apply to the craft of reporting, whether you work for the Financial Times, the Daily Echo, the local Church magazine or you are a self-styled proto-blogger, bombarding the bandwidth with your ‘internet voice’, mostly because it gives you the key to unlimited, but casual, un-monitored publishing.
Somebody once wrote of David Foster Wallace, the brilliant novelist, essayist and short story writer who tragically died, aged 46 in 2008:
“Wallace’s nonfiction abounds with qualifiers like “sort of” and “pretty much” and sincerity-infusers like “really.”
I suppose it made sense, when blogging was new, that there was some confusion about voice. Was a blog more like writing or more like speech? Soon it became a contrived and shambling hybrid of the two. The “sort ofs” and “reallys” and “ums” and “you knows” that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon.”
Fascinating stuff, but as with so much of the social media melancholia (and lets not forget that a staggering proportion of published narrative on-line is negatively based) it has created a conversational style of discussion that is badly researched and, even worse, non-attributable. Which, come to think of it, is largely how we conduct our day-to-day dialogue.
But with the potential, and the melancholy, and the ‘complaint’ comes responsibility. It is too easy for may ‘bloggers’ to drown in their own self-modulated funk and not do what even the laziest journalist should – do the research and get both sides of a story.
There’s too much space to fill, deadlines are terrifyingly aggressive, and the pressure to keep generating new content is like water torture. Another day in the blogosphere is another challenge to keep creating new stories. But new stories about what? No one wants to deal with the big issues – so the focus is on gossip, rumour, innuendo and political incorrectness, the white noise of everyday life. What’s important about that?
I digress. The truth is that the pressure to publish means that we are largely subjected to unsubstantiated nonsense that those glued to on-line delivery soon turn into ‘the truth’. A ‘publish and hide mentality’ that means smaller business, without the means, the resources or the cash to defend themselves, become embroiled in – ‘guilty by association’ because some idle hack couldn’t be bothered to join up the dots.
It’s a symptom of the ‘holidays and cup cakes’ importance that permeates all social media – the ‘look at me’ generation squeezing every ounce of self-importance out of a few on-line column inches or a post on Facebook.
If this all sounds like we’ve been on the wrong end of a piece of ‘less than casual’ journalism recently you’d be right. Those venerable publishers Haymarket recently ran a front-page story in Campaign magazine and Brand Republic about KENWOOD “Reviewing its global advertising requirements” with the reason for it drawing reference to an ASA ruling about a TV advert as the reason for the review. The facts around both stories were inaccurate and caused both KENWOOD and Idealogy angst and wasted valuable time. If it showed what we can achieve when we are collectively mobilised to right a massive wrong – you’d be right on that count as well! But what a waste of energy. And will it stop third-rate, inaccurate publishing of un-worthy tittle-tattle? Not a chance. It’s a world that, in truth, we co-exist and feed in. But it doesn’t excuse poor craft and even poorer research – that’s fundamental, and should be non-negotiable. But until we can find a broad and reactive church that takes these people to task then comment without responsibility is a behaviour we had all better get used to.
But wait – change may be on the horizon! The Leveson Inquiry is all over the news, sitting astride the contemporary challenge of controlling the culture, practise and ethics of the press. It will be making recommendations on regulation and governance consistent with maintaining freedom of the press and ensuring the highest ethical and professional standards. Will it drill down to ‘computer eyed-oiks’ sitting in a Kenilworth bedsit trying to punctuate their 15 minutes of fame? Probably not! Will it focus on the ‘publish and be damned’ tabloid comics that millions ‘read’ every day. Most certainly! But it’s a step – the direction will become clear when we stop having to rant like this.
Posted by Idealogy
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