Tuesday, July 29, 2008
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.html
Just 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.)
4 comments:
Err...... I don't get what this idealism is all about, really. Look, the moment you pick up a camera to shoot things, it's gonna your view of the subject that gets through to me when I see the photograph. Similarly, (disregarding the whole ambiguous affair of getting at the 'truth'), it's gonna be the reporter's reconstruction of past events that I get in the paper. Plz remember, he has few hard 'facts' on his hand and the rest of it all are conjectures, either his own or that of the respective 'authorities'. He has to put in some coherence in the facts and conjectures to make it 'read' as a story. How can he avoid being judgmental then? Whether he realises it or not, he is, after all, making it up from scratch starting with the ending! You seem to be asking him to be more sophisticated in his art by wanting him not to be overtly judgmental!
The only way out of this mesh is to give the disconnected 'facts', (the detailed autopsy report, maybe?!), in which case, the paper will have to shut down!
I know, my views are kinda paranoid. But, honestly, I don't see much in 'news' like murders and stuff. Somehow, they seem fictionalised and put in a platter to be relished. But, we want the stories anyway. Why bother reading a murder report otherwise?
Oh and btw, my earlier piece had little to do with your presentation, (which I rather liked).
1) A newspaper is after all, a business venture.
2) Disregarding the average-joe reporter who is only earning his bread, reporters will have to be super-humans to swim through all the intricate netting of the different 'authorities', innumerable personal agendas etc. to get at the so-called 'truth' of a crime. Which after all has no validity beyond his interpretation of events and evidences.
3) Who cares about the truth anyway? It's only when Nazi-gate comes up that people will sit up and say, "Oh look, what bullshit they must be feeding us!" We are content with an engaging write-up otherwise.
Baseline: I refuse to believe in the idealism thingy. I think you can only be an idealist if you believe some constant can be achieved. May be the 'truth', in this case. I do not believe in such constants.
I kinda did disagree with Neha in the beginnin when we started out on this assignment bu tnow I completely agree with her...The media has no right to provide information to the reader that will force them to make a wrong judgement that has nothing at all to do with the case!!!..I mean does every child who is born into a broken family end up getting raped and murdered??..No!..So why make a fuss this time?
I guess I was a little harsh in my comment. I do understand your idealism bit, a little. I guess I'd be equally appalled if like strategies were used to sell a novel or a film. But then, it's done all the time.
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