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A comment on “Are We a Hindrance or a Help?” London Free Press 4/16/09

May 2, 2009 at 5:48 pm Leave a comment

This is my comment on the  opinion piece “Are We a Hindrance or a Help?”  in the London Free Press, by Editor Paul Berton from April 16, 2009. In the piece, he explains his newspaper’s approach to the coverage of a breaking crime story which in my opinion, misses the mark on many levels.

Dear Paul Berton:

As you know, the first precept and guiding principle of journalism is to satisfy the public’s right to know.

 The community at-large, and your readers especially, share an abiding need and certainly depend on this “right to know,” so that they may best evaluate how certain issues, decisions and activities—by individuals, government and other entities—will affect their lives, livelihood, safety, interests and well-being.

 Credible independent reporting is the essential standard that provides citizens with facts, truth, information and insight to apprehend events of certain importance and urgency, to the extent that we may make reasoned and informed choices as free people in an open society.

 The direct impact therefore, and the main purpose for reporting a crime story is not as you wrote in your discussion piece referenced above: to be “helping the family and the police”. Rather, your overarching responsibility as a journalist should be: “helping” the citizenry, by reporting on a dangerous state of affairs; and “helping” your readers be informed, alert, and aware; and “helping” them take appropriate measures to get involved, or equally, to avoid, to assess and to be secure against that risk.

 By reporting and examining all aspects of the circumstances of this crime, you are “helping” not only by drawing attention to a sad human-interest story, but also “helping” by casting light on all the elements of the story that may yet have far-reaching and unknown consequences.

 “Help” the victim, by seeking from every reporter to verify their widest sources: to ascertain any number of possible scenarios; suspects; criminal patterns and known offenders; instances of other abuse, and any wider victimization. Look at the family and neighbors, the wider community members, and their relationships, fears, motivations and concerns,

 Look to leads from the public but surely challenge and condemn with every mighty tool of reason, those pathetically parasitic, carnival clairvoyants claiming psychic powers. Call them what they are: hateful manipulative scammers who prey twice-over on a family’s tragedy.

 Look to “help,” by also examining the institutions mandated to serve and protect, and scrutinize whether their conventions and procedures will prove a praise-worthy success or show to have hindered and contributed in any way, to a tragic, failed outcome.

 Point to any history of similar failings, and reveal the possibility of systemic shortcomings.

 Finally, stay with the story. Call to task and analyze the intersection of the legal system with the process of justice, and “help” define the kind of protection that society demands.

The pursuit of reporting that aspires to the highest purposes of the greater good, may be the one way that we may try “helping” journalism succeed.

Entry filed under: London Free Press, London Ontario, News & Views. Tags: London Free Press.