The Depersonalization of Reporting 

The news is not made in the newsroom.

That is a true statement. A former editor worried when he saw too many reporters at their desks in the middle of the day and, like a mother telling her kids to drop the game controller and go outside for once in their life, he would point to the door and yell “type here, news there!” to get people to, well, go cover the news.

If the news were truly in the newsroom, every story in every paper, on every TV station, on every website would be about hangovers, being broke, and – these days – how Trump is evil.  That last one actually is true, so you can see what kind of “news” is made in the newsroom.

Now – and this will not devolve into a “get of my damn lawn you rotten kids” rant – technology has changed that simple fact. Or, more accurately, “journalists” (ick) have allowed new technology to change how they cover the news.

Whether out of training, predilection, laziness, incompetence, insolence, or personal advantage, “journalists” have allowed themselves to be fed “news” and information as opposed to actually going out amongst the the people who live in the world and finding out for themselves what is important, what is being hidden, what makes the community tick…or sick.

And – like any slug who sits all day in the same spot getting fed – only trouble ensues.  Like the hapless passengers in “Wall-E,” “journalists have become immobile clots in the body politic, taking in indiscriminately and spewing out indiscriminately as well.

Covering news properly requires a human connection; it is an oddly intimate, especially as it is typically transitory,  process.  The woman quoted at the city council meeting, the tornado victim, the Eagle Scout, the murderer, the sleazy politician can all be impermanent subjects, crucial today, non-existent tomorrow and a reporter must be able to nearly-instantly understand each situation in as much totality as possible.

And an email from a PR flack simply doesn’t allow that to happen.

Reporters – not journalists – spent their time in the community, particularly at the local watering hole, always with an ear out for information and opinions and ideas.  That rarely happens anymore.

Instead of meeting for a drink  which allows for a discussion of history and nuance and also an assessment of body language and such, now a canned standard email suffices to pass as news.

Even phone calls are starting to become passe’ – why should a public relations flack bother when they can simply inject the journalists with their story via email or text?  No muss, no fuss, the message is out and if the reporter asks for more info or context that may not look good for your company or government agency you can just wait it out until deadline.

The reporter, again, loses the depth of the story, the “on background” side info, and the “off the record” tips that can – and did – lead to so many other important stories. And of course, gossip – the life blood of good reporting, a give and take between source and writer the edifies both.

In California, waiting out deadlines is not just a typical tactic for its government agencies but standard operating procedure – that is, if they reply at all.

Government communications people are paid with your tax dollars to do just that – communicate.  But they have now come to realize that maybe they really don’t have to communicate.

The standard tactic to deal with any outlet (like the Globe) outside the approved bubble is to maybe send an email, promise to send over more info soon, fail to do so, ask for more time, and then fail again anyway.  Phone call to chat, let alone lunch?  Never again as the state flacks know they can’t get in trouble if everything is in writing.

This can be described as soft censorship – the powers that be methodically and intentionally limiting information the public is allowed to see.  In other words, while it may not be the same as slamming the brakes on a car, it is similar to not filling the gas tank.  

The practice also creates an environment that restricts and cajoles how news is disseminated.  The playing field, in general, is set by the people who created the new game – every other actual reporter is then forced to play on the same unfair and rigged field to the detriment of the truth and, very much so, to the detriment of the public.

Of course, on occasion an email actually does lead to a real story; the occasional “send all” has landed some private and public PR flacks in hot water for accidentally telling the truth and sometimes one gets a glimpse into the behind the scenes inanity.

Case in point, the matter of $220,000-per-year California Department of Public Health Communications Director Ali Bay of asking the Globe (via this writer) to correct a story it had not run and was, in fact, not in need of correction as she asked for quotes from public officials to be removed.

But she may have thought it would fly because the media in the state is – the Globe and few other outlets excepted – perfectly happy to play the collaborationist game and merely regurgitate what they are told.  Remember, Bay was a key developer of the state’s pandemic communications strategy.

The media – again the Globe and a few other outlets excepted – ideologically monolithic, making the prospect of looking for something and finding out something they do not like not only daunting but counter-productive. The media is also much smaller than it once was – there are countless more flacks than reporters today in the state.  And without actual competition amongst outlets – you may not believe it, but newspapers would fight hard to break a story and stick it to the competition – there is no driving pride of career to force “journalists” to step outside the existing lines.

In other words, the communications flacks love influencing by email and the media doesn’t care.

Creating news that is more than a simple re-type of talking points requires that background, that interaction, that nuance, that little sumthin sumthin that is simply impossible via electronic communication alone.

But that can be difficult, that can be time consuming, that can end up with a story that is at odds with pre-conceived notions and that is a story a “journalist” may not want  to write.

Of course emails and texts and watching water board meetings or Congress via stream is incredibly handy and useful – one can’t be everywhere at once, an issue even more pronounced with the on-going decimation of newsrooms around the nation.

But instead of being handy tools when needed, they have become the only way many “journalists” interact with the news they are covering.  And social media tools like X/Twitter are even more temptingly dangerous – if a “journalist” has a pet peeve they can always find nine people on social media who agree with them and they can then – from the comfort of their desk – simply write a “the internet is buzzing/shocked/appalled with…” story whatever they want.

At their core, texts and emails and posts are meant to jam information into a person’s brain with as little potential for direct and personal feedback as possible – that is the antithesis of real reporting.

This siloed passivity also allows “journalists” more opportunity to pick and choose what they will cover with less potential blowback for not covering a “real” story.  It also allows for pre-judgement to flourish, as can be seen with a number of media organizations now being of the opinion that the motivation of the information provider – unless it is a government agency or a group or person that is saying what the outlet wants to hear – is relevant to the decision whether or not to “go” with a story.

It’s not – if a thing is true about person X it does not matter if the tip came from person Y who is widely known to loathe person X.  A real-time recent example of that kind of gatekeeping involves the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay. A number of news outlets – including the student-led Havard Crimson – were tipped off to her serial plagiarism but declined to pursue the story because the info came from a person that didn’t like Gay.

That did not end well for Gay, Harvard, the Crimson, or much of the national media.

Oddly enough, while many outlets now use motivation as a deciding factor when figuring out whether to “go” with a story or not they do not take into account a track record of accuracy.

If person X has been wrong – or flatly straight-up lied like so many of the former Deep State hacks that populate their airwaves – on CNN 357 times out of their last 361 appearances, they do not necessarily get the boot.  In fact, they get to stay and keep getting paid – sorry, Ronna, as long as they lie or are wrong in the right direction.

This type of “journalism” is only possible when newsrooms and media outlets are completely disconnected from their communities, from the people they serve, and that disconnect can be traced directly back to the computer screen.

News requires people – when people no longer matter to the news it’s not news anymore.