Technically, this is in response to Anindita's post.
(I've always been terrible at group discussions. Things always get too heated for me to deal with, and more often than not I just shut up out of sheer embarrassment and an unwillingness to, well, shout.
That's just a musing, nothing to do with the discussion - the very lively discussion! - we had in class that day.)
The point I was trying to make during class that day - clearly and not surprisingly, I didn't make it well - is not that "extra details" are uncalled for, but that I don't think they're to be used to make judgments. Hell, I think nothing should be used to make a judgment - at least in newspapers, and I realise I'm being too starry-eyed idealistic here - but that's just me.
I also realise that in my bit of the presentation I did harp a bit too much on the Daily Mail article - but that's because I was downright appalled. By reporting like this:
Revealed: The shoddy caravan site where mother of murdered Goa teenager Scarlett brings up her unorthodox family
Yeah,
that's what I was essentially objecting to. And:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-531289/Sorry-I-blame-Scarlett-Keelings-mother.htmlJust a column, but still.
Also:
"The truth about 'Good Life' of murdered teenager Scarlett Keeling
An empty milk bottle, tie-dye sheets pinned over the window instead of curtains, discarded black bin liners and a sleeping bag on the floor, and the contents spewing carelessly from a chest of drawers.
On top of them the remnants of a lost childhood - a plastic duck and young girl's jewellery box.
As these pictures show, this is the squalor in which Scarlett Keeling was being raised.
It is a million miles from the fantasy world of a wholesome family upbringing painted by her mother Fiona MacKeown in the past two weeks. "Oh, please.
Yeah, my objections are, shall we say, aesthetic. And whimsical.
I don't like the
drama used in reporting. Can we
stop "touching things up" all the time, please, and stop slipping in connotation and judgment all the time? I like a newspaper that respects its readers enough to let
them make a judgment.
Again, I'd like to repeat that I
don't mind the slipping in of the details of Fiona's marital life and so on : it's just the "oh, look, what a terrible mother Fiona is" bit that I object to. What the authorities suspect, the background of the incident - sure! bring them all on! - just don't say, "This is what we think, so you go ahead, think the same thing".
And yes, I do share Anindita's ambiguity about the whole "both sides" business...all I have to say is, don't pick a side at all.
I still stand by the notion that "saleability" isn't a criterion for "spicing" up details and news. I just don't want to even consider the whole "who's going to
read it if I say it so
boringly?" thing.
Because I still believe that news and reporting isn't something that's done commercially by definition. As in, I don't think someone should wake up one fine morning and say, "Hey, I'd like to make some money today, ooh, why don't I start a trashy newspaper!" . I think, and I like to believe, that reporting is something you do for its own sake. Because you're passionate about events and people and so on. Like teaching. I like to believe that you do it for kicks. Not for money, power, bla bla bla, but because of the simple reason that you like it.
Sneer at it if you will, but I'm going to hold on to the idealism.
=)
tra la la. byee!
(just had to say that, felt the earlier last line was too Solemn an ending.)
