A special note for young writers from Writing for Peace Adviser, Djelloul Marbrook: HOW THE PRESS BURIES WHAT IT DISAPPROVES ———————————————————————— You wouldn’t know it, and the press doesn’t want you to know it, but this feature is a burial. It is burying the most important development in American journalism in many years, the advent of FirstLook, an investigative news organization that is beginning to fulfill its promise to pick up the investigative ball the rest of the press has largely dropped. FirstLook has been off to a painfully slow but nonetheless promising start, and it is immensely more important than the projects described in this article. Yes. It reveals a practice of burying stories in pain sight. Months or years later when anyone questions whether the press covered a story the editors can say, Sure we did, here’s the file. But the breaking of a story is often only half the story. The question is whether the story is pursued. Take the Emma Sulkowicz story. If young writers run a search on her name they will quickly see that the press has been recycling the same story from day one rather than pursuing the obvious issues it raises. In short, the press is reporting on itself. That’s often how wars are covered. Reporters sit in a bar and trade stories and that becomes the authorized version of whatever they’re covering. It’s not true of all reporters and commentators of course. There are marvelous exceptions, such as Seymour Hersch, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, David Sirota, David Cay Johnston, Robert Fisk in Britain, and many more. Young writers should read everything Ben H. Bagdikian has written about the press. He is a pioneer in raising questions about the way stories are covered. They should also be familiar with A.J. Lieblings’s work. He coined the marvelous phrase, ademonai-kademonai stories, which we say every day: on the one hand this, on the other hand that, he said, she said, etc.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:08:19 +0000