Engine Room Talk

2006-04-22T06:13:00.000Z

At the Somerset Film Festival hosted by the Engine Room in Bridgewater in April 2005, I gave an hour-long talk called "The Death of the Story."

In the talk I described how the art of telling a story is disappearing from our news media. I described the manner in which it was happening and the undoubted negative consequences

I was inspired to do the talk because when I spoke to people not directly involved in the news business I realised that they were carrying around an idea of how news is gathered and presented which did not tally with the current reality of the process.

Many of those I spoke to subscribed to the image of reporters on the ground using local knowledge and expertise to throw light on developing events. The perception was that of an individual offering the viewer what he or she understood to be the truth.

This may have true once; certainly for television newsgathering the heyday was the late sixties into the late seventies. But the idea of the lone reporter and their crew living off their wits in hazardous conditions in far off lands died some time ago with the arrival of the satellite truck.

The notion that a reporter just goes off with a camera crew for days or even weeks to return with a well-crafted and compelling story is no longer accurate and hasn’t been for some time.

It’s not the reporter’s fault. The only thing better than a good story to a reporter is a good story that is an exclusive. Most reporters would love to live up to the image of the dogged newshound sniffing out stories and scooping rivals.

Most news reported on television is essentially rehashed wire copy. Reporters are parachuted into news hotspots at the last possible minute to save money. Presence has more value than substance.

When they arrive they probably have no more idea of what is going on then you or I but they have to report something – so they use wire-copy supplied buy news agencies. But they could read the wire-copy just as easily at home. It brings no advantage to the reporter in the field. It becomes second hand information for the viewer or reader.

This is because so many news organisations have cut costs to the extent that for most of the world there is no in-country or in-region reporter who knows the area, the history, the players and all importantly what the story actually is.

So why the present state of affairs where we are being given information about the world by people only marginally more informed then ourselves?

Two reasons; money and technology.

The first issue that confronts a news editor when deciding to commit resources to a story is its newsworthiness his very next consideration is its cost. The quality of coverage of a given story is directly proportional to the amount of resources apportioned to it. Crews, flights, hotels, uplinks and so on. As in most businesses the news editor is under a lot of pressure to keep costs as low as possible.

The cheapest option is to source material from news agencies but some stories simply demand representation from the broadcaster. This means sending a reporter into the field.

There is a lot of talk in media circles about setting the news agenda. But that is a contradiction in terms. News is news because it is unpredictable. The so-called agenda is looking at events calendars and deciding which public relations firm, spin-doctor or some other kind of self-promoter is worth spending some time and money on. This is largely a matter of finding entertaining ways to fill the shows on slow news days and requires neither much discrimination nor talent. Don’t take my word for it have a look at what’s on your telly.

I mention this as while deliberations are being made producers will be standing by to juggle running orders of items and their relative lengths.

After deciding that there is no way they can depend purely on agency material for the story and the decision has been made to commit resources the next most important question needs to be addressed. How quickly can they get someone on air?

In many cases, unless the reporter can go live from the scene the perception in the public mind is that it might as well not have happened. Viewers want to see someone they can identify with at the scene or as close as possible. This enhances the authority of what the reporter says and increases not only their personal credibility but also the credibility of the organisation they represent.

The ability to send satellite pictures back from pretty much anywhere on the face of the planet has dramatically changed the nature of news coverage. The satellite uplink has been a fantastic boon in its ability to provide immediacy both in time and in space to major events. However, it has turned out to be a double-edged sword. The ability to continuously transmit a signal has enabled most major broadcasters to instigate and establish a "rolling news" format of some kind.

Because of the ease with which it is possible to feed the ravenous news monster a reporter can find themselves chained to the camera platform for the quarterly, half-hourly and hourly updates. They are not free to go and cover the story directly themselves. Often, they cannot even fit the basic reporterly duty of attending a press conference into the gaps between the regular updates.

I have personally witnessed on many occasions the reporter on the so-called scene being fed the story piece-meal in their ear-piece from London.

There are serious drawbacks to current standards of television reporting.

1) Absence of feel. Reporters don't really 'know' what is going on. And at some level the viewer at home senses this and turns to another channel. I think because the reporter does not know enough of what is going on it is almost impossible from to tell a compelling story. He or she cannot convey what it is really like to be wherever they are.

2) Unreliable sources. In the absence of first hand accounts, journalists are increasingly dependent on sources whose provenance can be somewhat unclear. While the major news agencies are reputable and credible organisations even they cannot get in everywhere.

The reporting methods in Iraq throw this situation into sharp relief. Reporters cannot go and dig up a story for fear of their lives, the lives of the people with them and highly probably the lives of the people they are seen to come into contact with. Therefore they are dependent on local news sources whose bona fides cannot be properly vouched for and that is not taking into account the differences in journalistic standards that can be found around the world.

The military and other organisations of influence can disinform at will. There are no reporters on the streets of Iraq to challenge and corroborate the military press briefings. The Tillman saga in Afghanistan is indicative of how the US military cannot be regarded as a wholly trustworthy source of information.

What all this amounts to is that stories are not being told anymore. Reporters are chained to satellite uplinks reading scripts devoid of personal experience and knowledge. And it shows.

Hurricane Katrina was a classic example where reports were compiled from the most unreliable and unverified sources. That was when they weren’t simply made up out of thin air because the sounded sensational and plausible. (That the demonisation of the New Orleans inhabitants can only be explained by the extent of the inherent racism in the news media is a subject for another item.)

What could have prevented it? Credible reporters reporting what they saw and experienced in the city.

We know that this didn’t happen because when reporters did finally enter the city they found most of what was broadcast and published as fact was untrue.

Why didn’t it happen? Because no one would take reporters out of pocket i.e. away from the live positions for a few days so they could see for themselves what was really happening on the ground.

I believe that the telling of stories is how best we understand the world around us. Someone has to make sense of the data and statistics that surround us. Someone has to arrange facts in easily assimilable and sometimes entertaining ways so that we can have a better understand the events of the world and what they mean.

The key is compelling, interesting, storytelling which can only by achieved by a good reporters proximity to the raw data. They need to be able to hack at the coalface of human experience just so we know the truth in all its textured nuances and not be spoon-fed some second or third hand version what somebody thought what happened.

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