Real Journalists

California Senator Dianne Feinstein may have put her foot in it up to the ankle as she introduced a bill that would shield journalists from criminal investigations related to their work. She made it clear that her measure was intended to protect real reporters, defined as those who draw a salary -- as opposed, I guess, to screwball bloggers with 10 or so faithful readers....er...like me.

There are lots of people out there who would love to be “real” reporters and be paid a decent salary, though such positions are fewer and farther between, as traditional news organizations that could actually pay salaries have drastically shrunk.

But I do know what DiFi is trying to say. Now that journalism has been democratized, anyone can have a platform, like the one I’m standing on right now. Journalism is one of those professions that many people think they can do without the least bit of training. They have eyes, ears, noses, and may be plugged farther in than the lame-stream media people in the big building down the street.

I used to work in a tourist town. Tourism involves promotion and marketing, and it seemed that at every public meeting, somebody would stand up and offer some whizbang magic bullet that would double the number of visitors to town overnight, and wondered why those in the business didn’t have the brains to see a solution that was right in front of them. It didn’t matter that the head of the convention and visitors bureau in the city had a degree or two in this subject, or that those running hotels actually had gone to a university to study their industry, and might even have a decade or three of experience in it.

Many parents are experts on how to educate children, and wonder why their kids’ credentialed teachers can’t do it and why they pay taxes to support overly compensated school district administrators, some of whom have doctoral degrees. Or your great aunt has a family recipe that has healed what’s ailing you a lot faster than the Harvard-educated doc with all those expensive pills.

But isn’t there something to be said for journalists whose passions have prodded them to get the training and put in the time practicing their craft, who’ve been around the block a few times, know when they’re being flim-flammed and where the bodies are buried, and have learned how to tell you the stories you need to see, hear, or read? They probably wouldn’t be in that profession over a period long enough to have acquired those skills unless someone paid them along the way.

So Senator, I hear what you’re saying. But maybe there’s a better way of saying it.

Disaster and Humility

This morning I read a rather surprising story about a surviving passenger aboard the plane that crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday. This individual, an executive at Samsung, began tweeting out information to the world almost immediately after the crash. Naturally, the cable news networks wanted to talk to him, but he said no, on the grounds that he didn’t want to divert attention from the crash and was just tweeting to let the world know that most of the passengers were OK.

He said NO? Is he a candidate for sainthood or just shy?

When I was a journalist, I was a little different. Some years ago, my town was rattled by a rather strong earthquake, which lasted what seemed like an eternity. Before the shaking stopped, I was on the phone to a national radio network. My wife observed that I hit that phone first before even asking how she was. She doesn’t hold it against me, saying I was just acting like a good reporter.

Cut to last year, where I was in the lead car of a metro train in the city where I live now. The train struck someone who was on the tracks. He had lain there deliberately, apparently. The train stopped, and I heard the engineer calling plaintively under the train, “Sir, are you OK?” Did I worry about how other passengers were reacting? I had no recorder with me, and probably would have used it to gather their reactions for news use. Instead, I was on the phone to the local news radio station immediately.

Should I be ashamed of this cold-fish behavior? I can’t say that I am, even though the Samsung guy at least started me thinking about it. Isn’t one of the chief motivations of the average professional journalist – or media outlet – to be there first with the information? Doesn’t part of the thrill come from knowing you are first, and if even for a few seconds, in complete control of the story?

Those of you who think this is a questionable motivation are no doubt thrilled to know that in this interconnected world, the media don’t control stories anymore. The people do. Humility is being forced on media folks, whether we like it or not. Professional reporters aren’t usually the first at the scene of breaking news. Information has been democratized. Media outlets depend on “civilians,” who carry all the necessary newsgathering equipment in their pockets. And the civilians are in control. If you don’t want to talk to CNN, as that Samsung guy didn’t, you don’t have to.

It’s clear to me, though, that I will not be joining him as he ascends into heaven. I am packing a Hawaiian shirt for the other place.

 

The Fickle Media Spotlight

By now, you have heard the tragic story of Sandra Cantu, the 8-year-old from the California Central Valley city of Tracy, who had been missing for 10 days. Sandra’s story led the evening news in the San Francisco Bay Area almost every night since her disappearance. Hundreds of volunteers came from all over the region to help authorities search for her. There were tearful nightly appearances by family members and neighbors, and there were candlelit prayer vigils. How did it end? The little girl’s body was found by farmworkers in a suitcase pulled from an irrigation pond.

The Cantu case provides a disturbing parallel to a 1997 case I covered as a radio reporter in Southern California. Anthony Martinez was 10 years old when he disappeared from the town of Beaumont, not far from Palm Springs. While he was missing, his story led TV newscasts all over the region. Volunteers turned out in droves to look for him. There was a “prayer circle” one weekend in a local park, attended by Beaumont’s mayor. This story also ended badly. Anthony’s body was found about two weeks later in the foothills near what is now the Joshua Tree National Park.

These stories always bother me, for reasons apart from, or in addition to, the tragic circumstances involved. Exactly how do these cases become media events? Why do certain kids get the attention, when there are probably hundreds of other missing children around the country whose stories don’t make that level of news? Do they have better PR, with more media-savvy relatives? Are they cuter than other missing kids?

True, the media have to cover these stories, and it’s clear that the best way to dramatize any story is to focus on individual examples instead of statistics. But what conclusions are we to draw? Does this coverage teach a valuable lesson about adults doing a better job of watching kids, or does it just make parents more paranoid?

Does the coverage pump up false hope? When the tragic end is revealed, are all those volunteers feeling as if they wasted their time? And most disturbing: is all that praying a waste of time?

In the case of Anthony Martinez, a suspect is in custody and the wheels of justice are grinding away. As of this writing, the facts in the case of Sandra Cantu have yet to come out. But I wish I could come to a conclusion about all of this. Maybe that’s part of the pain we feel after these cases – caused by the inability to wrap them up and file them away under some neat philosophical heading. At least, that seems to be my problem.

There, now I’ve said it.

Life-changing Toys

I’m much too old to be getting toys for Christmas, but I got a terrific one this year (or should I say last?) from Santa: an Internet radio.

Now I think this is way cool, though geeks would probably call it primitive. With this device you can hear audio streams without a computer. Thousands of radio stations in the U.S. and around the world put their live audio on their Web sites, and the Internet radio allows you to search for your favorites and set them up on pushbuttons, just like a car radio. If there’s breaking news in a particular city, you can “tune” in a station there and hear how the locals cover it. The really interesting part is listening to the same stations that local listeners hear, not available on short wave. I can listen to the radio station where I used to work in a distant city. To expand horizons a little, I have taken to listening to a newscast on Jamaica’s Nationwide News Network. Just hearing the accents makes me warm – it was about 82 degrees there the other day. In addition to that, the country’s prime minister recently announced all kinds of tax breaks for businesses and individuals, if I heard the story correctly. Maybe that makes you feel warm.

Sure, you can find all this stuff on your laptop, but I’m old enough to want to work with a box with a speaker and knobs on it. Another nice part is that no keyboard is required. So much enjoyable software involves having to use a mouse and a keyboard, so it feels like you never leave the office. The Internet radio involves new technology installed in an old, familiar package. I recall someone saying that the only reason we have been using CDs and DVDs is that they are discs with holes in the middle, just like the old vinyl records, and that the disc design was the only way to make a successful transition from the old to the new.

This could all get me started on why we need radio and TV stations with expensive transmitters consuming power and radiating energy, or why we need an FCC to license and regulate them, since the ability to “broadcast” is no longer a limited resource. But we’re barely into the New Year, and I wanted to put off the axe-grinding till at least the next post.

There, now I’ve said it.