A Texas Rep. calls for Connie Lingus, Anita Dickenme and Holden MiDick (A throwback post on how to avoid getting pranked)

A friend of mine posted this moment from a Texas Legislative session where a bill targeting doctors who provided help to transgender youth was up for debate. As heartfelt as this woman’s pitch is to get this thing stopped, it pales in comparison to what happens next:

The fact it took this guy three tries to figure out what was happening is the reason for this throwback post. Between pranksters and terrible headline issues, we never know when our work will become a cautionary tale for future generations.

To help you avoid asking for Connie, Anita or Holden to step forward, here’s a throwback post to help you out:

3 ways to avoid letting Tucker Boner, Dick Hertz and Heywood Jablome turn your story into a prank

The world of news features is fraught with danger when you couple unsuspecting reporters with people who enjoy trolling them. A journalism colleague and friend alerted me to this potentially suspect source in a New York Times story about Zillow Surfing:

As my friend noted, “I couldn’t help but think the reporter got duped,” before referencing this classic “source” in a New York Post story:

If you need the joke spelled out, I’ll answer the question for you: “No, I would not like to blow you…”

The Post story is coming up on two decades old, but the folks there are apparently not giving up the ship when it comes to Heywood’s bona fides (sorry… couldn’t resist) as this story is STILL AVAILABLE.

Is it possible that these guys were both real people with just unfortunate names? Sure. I mean, one of the best pitching coaches in baseball history (at least in my mind) had probably the world’s worst name if he wanted people to take him seriously: Dick Pole.

Of all the greatest “add another layer” moments was the year in which Pole played for the Portland Beavers. Although you should know by now I’m not creative enough to make this stuff up, here’s proof:

We could spend hours going through a list of names people have used to punk reporters. The Seymour Buttz and Mike Rotch’s of the world are well known, thanks in large part to “The Simpsons” and Bart’s penchant for pranking the local bar.

There are plenty of cases where “regular” people have names that go beyond common spellings or those we have seen hundreds of times before. We once had a music guy who kept calling us to promote the promising bands he represented. His first name was Spackle. I have no idea how or why…

Even more, there are cases where people share famous names with people who have entered the public spotlight in an unfortunate fashion. (In my time at the State Journal, I worked with a “Susan Smith” right around the time another “Susan Smith” was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Our “Susan” actually wrote a column about these unfortunate pairings…) And, of course, it’s probably no great shakes for these regular folks, either, who have to deal with this on a daily basis:

However, as a journalist, you can’t cut people out of your stories or avoid them just because “that name sounds weird.” With that in mind, here are a few tips for keeping yourself out of trouble in these situations:

Trust but verify: In most cases, you’re getting people to tell you their names and spell them, so you’re in pretty good shape for making sure you got the name itself right.

If the name seems like it might be a “trolling moment,” you can’t automatically assume this person is messing with you. (“So that’s Dick P-O-L-E… wait a minute!”) It would be in poor form to demand ID from that person, but you can get around that concern in a few other ways.

Make use of the other publicly available databases, such as those for court records. Maybe “Yankton Weiner” was sued, filed suit, got a speeding ticket or got a divorce from the former Mrs. Weiner, which would help you figure this out.

Do a search through multiple other websites connected with the topic at hand to see if that person was cited as a source. A quick run through your own news site and a few others in the area would be helpful as well. If you keep coming up empty, telephone directory searches are also helpful.

Also, the internet has a burgeoning public records industry where various companies swear they can find out anything about anybody. If you search for a name, chances are, you’ll get at least something in the free version of the company’s site. Worst case, pay the $20 or whatever if you’re desperate to use the source but afraid of looking like an idiot.

Box the source in: One of the easiest ways to prevent a source from snowing you is to pin that source down with specific questions about themselves. A person might quickly give you “I. P. Frehleigh” as a name, but would likely be less adept telling you what the I and P stand for. The more questions you ask, the more hemmed in that source will be.

If the source works in some professional field, ask for a business card with the idea that you might want to reach out to them later. If they balk, that’s a pretty good indication that something might not be above board. If they offer a phone number instead, use that number to reach out to them from another phone and see how they answer. Or use a reverse-directory app to get their name from that number.

Throw some basic chatter at the person to get some other information such as, “So how long have you lived around here?” or “Where did you say your office was?” If the answers are quick and easy, the person is likely on the level. If they feel forced, be wary. Either way, write the answers down so you can check them against other information. Also, don’t be afraid to go back and ask a basic question a second time to see if they have it the same way twice: “I’m sorry, but HOW did you spell ‘Frehleigh’ again?”

Ask that source to give you some contact information for their colleagues or other folks who might be just as helpful. This will help limit the number of lies that you can hear. At the end of the day, paranoia will be your best friend, so ask as many questions about the person as you need to

Cut it: There’s no rule that says you have to use a source just because you got the source to talk. Granted, some sources are crucial to a story, but if you review what Mr. Jablome and what Mr. Boner told the reporters here, you can see nothing vital or unique. This is a case of a reporter just deciding, “Well, I got the source, so I’m using him,” a concept in journalism known as notebook emptying.

At the end of the day, I’d rather be one source short than to add to the legend of “Elle Phunt,” “Dee Z. Knutz” or “Barry McCockiner.”

Confidence or Thuggery? A quick look at avoiding double-standards in journalism writing

In the wake of the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship game, the question of double standards emerged as a major plot point.

During LSU’s 102-85 defeat of Iowa, Tiger star Angel Reese made the “can’t see me” hand gesture toward the Hawkeyes’ Caitlin Clark as a form of trash talking. Clark had made similar gestures throughout the tournament toward opposing players.

In one case it was deemed “confident” and “self-assured.” In another case, people decried the “lack of sportsmanship” and “thuggery.”

If you can’t guess who got which critique, here’s a clue: Clark is white and Reese is Black.

William Rhoden, a distinguished author and sports journalist, broke down the entirety of this situation on Andscape, drawing on prior examples of this throughout athletics:

On Sunday, Reese simply gave it back to Clark. Many neutral observers and Clark’s fans were not pleased and played the sportsmanship and class card. Double standards: When we do it, it’s bravado. When you do it, it’s crass. When we play hard, it’s gritty. When you play hard, it’s thuggery.

I saw this this firsthand in the 1980s with John Thompson’s Georgetown team. They were routinely cast as villains and thugs. We saw the same thing with UNLV’s great teams of the 1990s. When UNLV played Duke for the national title in 1990, Duke’s players were cast as “choirboys” while UNLV players were cast as villains and thugs. Then, of course, there was Michigan’s Fab Five which, critics say, introduced hip-hop elements into basketball.

Now that the women’s game has grown and African American women continue to become increasingly prominent, the same stereotypes are emerging: Black women portrayed as rough-and-tumble street fighters, their white counterparts as stalwart, heady competitors.

And let’s not even get into the whole history of Don Imus and his “nappy-headed hos” review of the Rutgers women’s basketball team…

We’ve talked about this kind of thing at length a few years back when stories had framed women based on their gender identity first and their accomplishments as an afterthought. We also touched on the issue of race and framing of athletes back when Brian Flores launched his discrimination suit against the NFL.

As a brief reminder here to journalism students, consider the following issues when including descriptors or making word choices in ways you might not initially consider:

WOULD YOU USE THE DESCRIPTOR OF THE SITUATION WAS REVERSED?: One of the key ways to determine fairness in language or description is to turn the tables and see if it still works for you. My favorite example comes from Jim Bouton’s book, “Ball Four,” in which one of his teammates notes that he wouldn’t mind the papers referring to him as “the black first baseman” if only they would refer to his counterpart as “the white first baseman.”

The same is true of descriptions like “the female mayor” or “the woman CEO” and so forth. Feminist scholars have long noted the incongruity in language as to how men and women are described. A few common pairings include:

- Women are “pushy” while men are “assertive”
- Women are “bossy” while men “take charge”
- Women are “stubborn” while men are “persistent”

Calling attention unnecessarily to an attribute that you wouldn’t flip the other way is clearly an indicator that you might want to rethink that descriptor. I can’t remember seeing headlines about “the white quarterback” or “the male company president” and I bet most of you can’t either. Same thing with references to a “straight wedding” or a “cis gender politician.”

I can’t imagine someone calling Caitlin Clark a “thug” for her trash talking, but I know that word showed up in a number of discussions involving Angel Reese. That’s clearly part of the problem.

DOES THE TERM HAVE A LOADED MEANING?: I can’t think of any time I’ve heard someone described as “a looter” or “a rioter” and had a positive reaction to that person. Those terms carry with them some negative baggage. Conversely, I’ve seen an array of meanings ascribed to the term “clowning around” that range from bright and happy to racist.

A few years back, I remember seeing an analysis of the term “unskilled labor.” In a post on this term, someone noted that all labor is skilled. If you took Bill Gates and stuck him with a road construction crew, he would be as lost as can be. If you took Jamie Dimon and put him in charge of a Naperville McDonald’s during lunch rush, he would probably end up with a crowd of really angry people and some severe grease burns. The term “unskilled labor” is meant to diminish the value of what certain people do and thus make it easier to discount them or pay them less.

We could go on for days, but the point is that language matters in how we tell stories and how we frame the characters in them.

A handy guide for navigating gender terminology via the Washington Post

Although it’s about a year old now, the Washington Post’s guide to gender, LGBTQ issues and other similar topics has started making the rounds again. The Post’s approach is both educational and explanatory, outlining what it is doing and why it thought publishing this would be helpful:

Depending on one’s life experiences, it can be challenging to navigate some of the terms of the debate. Informed by the guidance of a number of organizations, including GLAAD, the Trans Journalists Association, InterAct, the American Medical Association and the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, The Washington Post has compiled a glossary of the terms and concepts that show up in our coverage.

The glossary below is not comprehensive, and there is ongoing conversation about which language is most appropriate and accurate. This guide is intended to be a clear and accurate starting point to help readers better understand gender issues.

The organizations that the Post listed have provided guidance to the media over the years with style guides that have defined similar terms, made specific requests for eschewing certain words and generally provided journalists with ways to speak more inclusively and intelligently on these topics.

The Post’s effort is helpful in providing additional context to its readers regarding specific terms they might have seen in the paper’s coverage. It also provides that mainstream voice that can convince other publications to make similar decisions in terms, explanations and approaches. As much as journalists tend to think of themselves as ahead of the curve on what’s happening around them, a lot of us tend to stick to our own tried-and-true approach until “the big dogs” make a move. (This is why we tend to cling to our AP style books.)

For a full look at the Post’s ongoing efforts and the glossary itself, here’s the link.

Hope it helps.

Don’t tell me that “concerned citizens” engaged in “heated discussions” and “tensions rise”: An explanation of “weasel voice” and how to avoid it in journalism (A Throwback Post)

A teaching colleague posted this “ask” recently regarding the blog:

This kind of phraseology tends to show up in media writing from time to time, in which one news organization figures out a relatively soft euphemism for something and others then co-opt it. The ones I recall were “concerned citizens” and “urban renewal,” neither of which really did much in the way of explaining what was going on.

“Tensions rise/are rising/continue to rise” is just another example of this kind of “weasel voice” that tries to say “Group A and Group B are not happy about X, Y and Z and here’s why.” As my colleague noted, it also is impossible to quantify how much tension there is, what it might lead to or why we should care.

Today’s post reintroduces us to the concept of “weasel voice” and why it’s terrible. We also go into the ways in which we can improve on this kind of writing and make things better for our readers. (If you want to take a look at a second post on “weasel voice,” this one is one of my favorites: A 3,000-word story basically tries to describe what is essentially prostitution in a happy and sunny way as “sugar dating.”)

Hope it helps.

The concept of “weasel voice” in writing and several ways we can avoid it in journalism

The “holy trinity” of noun-verb-object that we discussed at length in both books is all about trying to effectively communicate in an active-voice format. The structure of “who did what to whom/what” makes a lot of sense and clearly provides key information to readers. However, writing in active voice doesn’t always guarantee you are meeting the needs of your readers.

The Economist took a look at how it’s not passive voice or active voice that creates the biggest problem for writers and readers. It’s “weasel voice” writing that does the most damage. The article makes several key points about clarity and information that you can use, even if you aren’t covering political insurgencies or violent insurrections. Consider what weasel voice does and what we can do to fix the problems:

Weasel voice hides the identity of the person committing an action: Passive voice provides readers with a limited amount of information because we lack crucial information about the “who” in the sentence. For example:

The bank on Appleton Avenue was robbed at gunpoint Wednesday afternoon.

The “who” in here is not only unclear but missing as “by a criminal” is implied. However, writing this sentence in active voice doesn’t help things any if we don’t have specific information on that person doing the robbing:

A gunman robbed the bank on Appleton Avenue on Wednesday afternoon.

What people want to know is WHO robbed the bank, which is usually information that isn’t available in crime stories so we tend to give the reporter a pass on this. Where this becomes more problematic is when journalists let vague statements slide into their copy or fail to push sources for more specifics. Here’s a “weasel voice” approach in both active and passive voice structures:

Passive: Sen. Carl Jones said he and his colleagues were sent complaints about voter fraud, which is what made the ID law necessary.

Active: People sent complaints to senators regarding voter fraud, Sen. Carl Jones said, which is what made the ID law necessary.

Let’s do some “weasel analysis:”

In neither sentence do we know HOW MANY complaints were lodged.
In neither sentence do we know HOW ACCURATE those complaints are.
In neither sentence do we IDENTIFY the PEOPLE who complained.

As a journalist, you want to press for these details so you can see how big of a deal this is:

Of the 720 poll workers in his state, 653 reported finding multiple cases of voter impersonation in the 2016 presidential election, Sen. Carl Jones said as he backed a voter ID law Tuesday.

Despite only one case of alleged voter impersonation in the 2.8 million ballots cast in his state, Sen. Carl Jones said a voter ID law is crucial to the democratic process.

Weasel voice allows for unproven allegations: The rumor mill is always robust in politics, small towns and junior high school. As I have to deal with family members in all three of these areas, I find myself saying “says who?” a lot in my daily life. Here’s an actual conversation I had last year with my seventh-grader:

Zoe: Daddy, one of the boys at school was expelled for threatening to beat up the principal.
Me: Who told you that?
Zoe: (NAME) said at lunch that she heard…
Me: Wait, is that the kid who keeps telling you every year since fourth grade that she’s moving to California? And she still hasn’t?
Zoe: Yeah, but…
Me: Uh-huh…

The weasel voice approach hides sources, so readers have no way of knowing how likely something is to occur. Political writers and sports journalists often start sentences with “Sources have told me that…” and then they explain something that nobody wanted to say on the record. I had conversations with high-end reporters in both sports and politics who said they couldn’t operate any other way.

First, I find that a bit weak, as it’s the grown-up, journalistic version of “Everybody does it!” If I didn’t get to stay out past curfew or get a purple mohawk with that excuse when I was a kid, I’m not buying it now from professional journalists.

Second, it’s often a case of just letting accusations slide without pushing back on them. Don’t let anyone tell you “everybody is saying” or “I’m hearing that X is the case” or whatever else. CNN pulled this together from a series of statements President Trump made before and after the election and you can see why this is a concern:

Weasel voice allows me to say pretty much anything with a vague attribution of “people said” or “sources said” or “everyone is saying.” When you have a source providing you with information based on those vague attributions, do more to get concrete answers or consider not publishing the statements without additional proof.

Weasel voice falsely emboldens you to make hyperbolic claims: Here are a few key terms I’d include in the “weasel voice” lexicon that you should avoid:

Allegedly
Arguably
Supposedly
Said to
Mostly
Traditionally
In recent memory
Believed to be
Might
Uncertain

Now, not all of these words are bad words, but they tend to lend themselves to creating bad sentences more often than not. When you use these words in “weasel voice,” you allow yourself to make bigger claims than you can prove because you feel like you hedged your bet. Consider this:

Springfield High School Principal Beth Barlenga allegedly took $15,000 from the school’s milk money fund to purchase an ostrich coat for her 30-year high school reunion.

OK, who is doing the alleging and how likely are we to believe this person?

Springfield High School Principal Beth Barlenga stole $15,000 from the school’s milk money fund to purchase an ostrich coat for her 30-year high school reunion, prosecutor Dan Standford told a jury Wednesday.

In some cases, you can’t wrap it all up in a single attribution, but that doesn’t give you the right to avoid telling people where you got this stuff. Here’s an approach that takes a bit longer to get the scenario in place, but it’s worth the wait:

Springfield High School Beth Barlenga wore a coat made of ostrich to her 30-year high school reunion this weekend, according to former classmates Carla Jackson and Marty McKeeper. McKeeper said she bragged that it cost more than $15,000 and that “nobody here could afford it.”

Meanwhile, district accountant Carl Spackler filed a report stating that the milk money fund at Barlenga’s school came up $15,000 short during a recent audit. Springfield police spokesman Adam Bronzer said the department filed charges against Barlenga, accusing her of the theft.

Don’t try to write around the hard work of reporting. Do the job and show people how you know what you know. Here’s another example of how weasel voice can eliminate your responsibility as a reporter:

Brett Favre is arguably the most durable player in the history of the National Football League.

Again, who is doing the arguing and why is it we should believe this person? In most cases, it means that the reporter wants to say it to be true, but knows he or she can’t without being accused of relying on opinion to make the point.

How do you fix this? It’s called looking stuff up:

Brett Favre set a record for durability in the National Football League, starting 297 consecutive regular season games despite suffering multiple serious injuries. According to an ESPN report on his streak, Favre sustained a first-degree shoulder separation, severely sprained his left ankle, coughed up blood, sprained his right thumb, sprained his lateral collateral ligament of the left knee, broke his left thumb, sprained his right hand, tore his right biceps and sustained a stress fracture of the left ankle but kept playing.

Looking stuff up can be annoying, but it’s better than faking it, as too many weak writers are willing to do:

The collapse of the Highway 441 bridge killed 12 people and injured 43 more, making it the worst disaster of its kind in recent memory.

Who’s doing the remembering? Probably the reporter who didn’t want to bother to look something up. “In recent memory” is one of those wonderful safety nets that allows for hyperbole without responsibility. When an editor says, “Hey what about X disaster?” the writer can say, “Oh, I didn’t remember that…” Good grief. Also, in most of the student newsrooms I have encountered the term “back in the day” usually means about a year and a half ago.

Just look stuff up:

The collapse of the Highway 441 bridge, which killed 12 people and injured 43 more Wednesday, was the deadliest disaster of its kind since Minneapolis’ I-35 bridge fell into the Mississippi River in 2007, killing 13 and injuring 143.

Not perfect, but at least the facts are there.

Keep an eye out in your writing for spots where vague statements need more support, weasel words provide a sentence with a crutch or allegations randomly occur without the proper backing. Once you learn the ways of the weasel, you can use your writing skills to defeat them.

Two simple ways to determine if you are doing audience-centric journalism or pandering to your audience

EDITOR’S NOTE: In an attempt at “less is more,” we’re trying out the Axios approach to working through some of the more “event-based” posts. Tell us what you think in the comments. — VFF

The Lead: As part of its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion Voting Systems filed court papers earlier this month that included emails, text messages and other communication at the network, clearly stating Fox’s leadership knew Trump’s election fraud claims in 2020 were untrue.

Hosts like Laura Ingram, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity privately acknowledged many of the election-denying guests were “lying” or “insane” but continued to support them because they didn’t want to upset their audience.

The brief shows that Fox News stars and executives were afraid of losing their audience, which started to defect to the conservative cable news alternatives Newsmax and OAN after Fox News called Arizona for Mr. Biden. And they seemed concerned with the impact that would have on the network’s profitability.

On Nov. 12, in a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion.

“Please get her fired,” Mr. Carlson said. He added: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Making things worse for Fox, Rupert Murdoch admitted as part of a deposition that he knew his hosts were falsely promoting this stuff and chose not to stop them from doing so.

Dominion’s filing casts Mr. Murdoch as a chairman who was both deeply engaged with his senior leadership about coverage of the election and operating at somewhat of a remove, unwilling to interfere. Asked by Dominion’s lawyer, Justin Nelson, whether he could have ordered Fox News to keep Trump lawyers like Ms. Powell and Mr. Giuliani off the air, Mr. Murdoch responded: “I could have. But I didn’t.”

Background and recap:

We covered the suit here when Dominion first filed it back in March 2021, in which the company stated Fox folks knew Trump was lying, but refused to say so on air.
Dominion’s suit for defamation noted Fox’s actions were reckless and created true harm to the company and its workers. Not only did the company stand to lose about $600 million over the next eight years, but it stated that many Dominion workers received threats from people who believed what Fox was selling.
Fox responded that the company was attempting to be fair and balanced and did not knowingly lie to its audience.

Dynamics of Writing Flashback: When we first pitched the “Dynamics of Media Writing,” the idea of audience-centricity was at the core of the model we were pushing. One of the earliest reviewers of the book pitch took us to task for essentially “pandering to an audience” instead of doing actual journalism. In having to “sell” the book to the powers-that-be at SAGE, we had to address this issue both in the response and in the front of the book, so that people better understood what we meant.

The key point we wanted to make was that people have choices on where to go for their information and we can’t just tell them whatever it is we want to say and figure that’s good enough anymore. We need to understand who is out there using our content, what makes them connect with us so we can better connect with them and how best to present the information to them in a relevant, useful and interesting fashion. That’s helping your readers, not pandering to them.

TWO KEY WAYS TO KNOW WHICH ONE YOU’RE DOING: If you aren’t clear on how to tell the difference between catering and pandering, consider a couple thoughts below:

Seek Balance Within Reason: One of the things that protects journalists in presenting information that might turn out to be incorrect is the fair reporting privilege. In short, courts have held that if reporters are telling both sides (or however many sides are clearly present) in a fair and equal fashion.

If you have Group A telling you Group B is trying to kill the environment with its housing project, did you talk to Group B about those accusations and give those folks a chance to respond? If you are told a police report shows the mayor of your town is running a cocaine ring out of the back of the local thrift store, did you make every reasonable attempt to get that report and interview the mayor? These are all reasonable things.

The “within reason” portion is where we provide kind of a buffer against the need to interview people who think the reason the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade is because they’re Illuminati Lizard People who are attempting to turn humans into a colony of breeders whose offspring will feed the reptile race on their home planet. There is a limit, but letting people blather on about things you know not to be true (especially any person you call “a nut job” behind the scenes).

Tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear: The key aspect of audience-centricity is knowing what the audience needs to know and making sure you deliver that content. People don’t always LIKE to hear things they NEED to know, like if taxes are going up, why eggs now cost more than Taylor Swift tickets or how many more months the highway they take will be under construction. The most popular part of the news around here is the weather, which pretty much sucks from about late October until God shows mercy sometime around Memorial Day. Still, people NEED to know if the should plan extra time for a trip, plan to put away a little more money for the IRS or switch from eggs to something less pricey, like lobster.

The pandering folks at Fox were more worried that if they told their audience things they didn’t want to hear, the audience would go somewhere else where a different group of hairdos would. Fox knew instinctively that they didn’t have an audience that loved them. Instead, they were basically “sugar dating” a group of people who would dump them once they no longer got what they wanted.

I’m quite certain Walter Cronkite wasn’t all that thrilled to tell the country that JFK had died or that it was clear the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but he did it anyway, because people needed to know these things and he felt an obligation to his profession and viewers to say them. And I’m sure more than a few people weren’t thrilled to hear these things, but Cronkite had built up enough credit at the Bank of Credibility that those folks stuck with him.

As my first journalism teacher once told me, “If you want to be loved for doing your job, go teach kindergarten, because you’re not going to get that here in journalism.”

Based on a true story = We made up some stuff

Amazon spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 million during the Super Bowl for a minute-long teaser trailer of “Air,” a movie that tells the story of how Nike came to land Michael Jordan as a client. The Ben Affleck/Matt Damon flick follows a familiar trend these days, as it is “inspired by true events,” which is just a fancy way of saying, “We made up a bunch of stuff.”

Movies like “Elvis,” “Blonde,” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” have seen varying levels of post-hoc fact checking that call into question certain parts of the films, with film buffs rebuffing these concerns as mere “dramatization of controversial and contested historical events.” Still, these situations are small potatoes when compared to how some films and limited series have taken liberties with reality.

“Winning Time,” HBO’s look at the late 1970s/early 1980s rise of the L.A. Lakers, created massive amounts of controversy with the way in which it played fast and loose with the truth. Given the relatively recent era in which the events took place, the degree to which sports information is retained and a quality text from which to draw, it seemed almost purposeful that the series got so many things factually wrong, including places, dates, opponents and scores. This isn’t even accounting for how the athletes, including Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , publicly denounced the way in which they were portrayed.

Even more, Jerry West and his legal team have demanded an apology and retraction for the way in which the series portrayed the Laker legend, noting that the producers engaged in “legal malice.”

The New York Times did a deep dive on the cottage industry that has streaming services building mini-series around actual events, but then jazzing up reality to make life seem cooler than it was. The piece cites West’s portrayal as a “rage-aholic” as one of the more egregious cases of taking liberties with reality. It also points out that Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor in the “Central Park Five” case, is currently engaged in a lawsuit against HBO for its portrayal of her in the series “When They See Us.”

The defamation attorneys the Times quoted made it clear that these cases aren’t always easy to win, because the First Amendment does provide folks with the ability to create fiction based on true people. However, there are limits to this kind of thing:

Sometimes disclaimers are enough to protect a studio from legal liability, especially if they are prominently displayed in the opening credits and offer detail of what has been fictionalized — beyond a generic acknowledgment such as “based on real events,” legal experts say. The First Amendment offers broad protections for expressive works like film and television productions that depict real people by their real names.

But if someone can convincingly claim that he or she was harmed by what screenwriters made up, that is grounds for a strong defamation suit, said Jean-Paul Jassy, a lawyer who works on media and First Amendment cases in Los Angeles.

“A disclaimer is not a silver bullet,” he said.

This is in some ways akin to the way courts have afforded opinion pieces and reviews protection under the fair comment privilege. This allows writers to provide “pure opinion” that cannot be proven true or false without fear of falling afoul of defamation laws. That said, merely stating something is opinion isn’t a silver bullet either.

If you say, “In my opinion, Vince Filak is a lousy professor,” it falls into that opinion realm. It’s stated as such and there’s no way to define “lousy” so that a court could determine if I fit that definition or not. Plus, in defamation suits, the plaintiff (in this case, me) would have to show harm: Did I get fired? Did my classes shrink to the point I had to teach Medieval Basketweaving to maintain the course load in my contract? Did a group of random professors follow me around and mock me to the point I needed therapy? Probably not, so I’m not going anywhere with this.

However, if you say, “In my opinion, Vince Filak stabbed a student in the face with a fork during his 8 a.m. Writing for the Media Class on Feb. 20,” now you’re in trouble. It’s not an opinion, for starters, as we can prove it either happened or didn’t happen. It’s accusing me of a crime, which furthers my case. Plus, if that thing gains steam, I’m likely to get fired.

Writers, editors, producers and directors have always taken SOME liberties with reality when it comes to how they portray real people in fictional or semi-fictional stories. What makes this recent set of efforts more concerning is the degree to which they are bending the truth and the ways in which the fictionalization has the ability to warp public perception of real people in some harmful ways.

As for me, I’m looking forward to “Air” for the bad 1980s clothing and the Affleck/Damon banter that most of their collaborations pull off quite well. I’m also looking to see if anything gets dinged on a fact check, especially because, as anyone with any experience with Michael Jordan will tell you, he’ll take it personally.

John Oliver takes on crime reporting

Since it’s not always easy to broach a topic like “What if the police are lying to you as a journalist?” and because trying to keep students’ attention at around the six-week mark of class can be quite difficult, here’s a potential conversation starter for your reporting class. Comedian John Oliver took on the way in which crime reporting works on Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.” It has a lot of interesting jumping-off points as well as some important looks at how reporting shapes our worldview in terms of safety, race and the law, among other topics.

Before you consider showing this in class, a couple brief caveats:

He swears an appreciable amount, something that might be problematic if you work somewhere that requires penance if you use the word “damn” in the classroom.
He will often take a bit a little too far. He’s done far worse before, but there is at least one reference to Miss Piggy’s sex life, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The piece picks at broadcast news A LOT, which seems a bit unfair, given that a lot of media outlets follow the same basic pattern of taking police press releases and running with them.
He has a point of view. If you’ve never watched “Last Week Tonight” before, it’s worth mentioning, in that he fact checks the heck out of stuff but like most things with a point of view, he points to things that support his POV. Some people call that cherry-picking, but there appear to be a lot of cherries around this story.

From my own experience in working with the police and covering crime, let me add these thoughts:

The reliance on press releases as a sole source is a bad practice across the board. Oliver points out that a lot of the problems in how narratives are cast comes from press releases from public-information officers. Journalists should essentially know that all press releases come with a point of view, not just those that come from the police. Relying on a press release from Dyson will probably lead to the story, “Study finds U.S. needs more, better vacuum cleaners.”
A lot of the problems here are germane to all of journalism these days, in which the importance of filling the grist mill leads to grab-and-go journalism. A lot of our problems come from not being able to be at the scene or develop trustful relationships with sources or waiting to tell a story until it’s fully fleshed out. This is as true in political coverage, education coverage and other forms of coverage as it is in crime coverage.
In some cases “police said” carries with it a special layer of protection, based on certain interpretations of qualified privilege, in which journalists can rely on official sources acting in an official capacity without fear. That’s why it’s there. Also, he mentions some places are using “police claim” as a substitute for being deferential to police. Please don’t follow this path. “Said” is supposed to be neutral. The problem is that we lack other people on the other side of the issue to do some “saying” for us. Also, if you stick allegedly in there as another potential fix, please know that every time you use allegedly, God kills a kitten.
He always ends giant segments like this with the “not all (fill in the group) are bad people who act this way” after spending 28 minutes telling you how crappy that group can be. I’ve had my share of crappy PIOs in various departments, but I’ve also worked with some really good police, deputies and other law-enforcement officials over the years. I follow the simple idea of extending them the level of trust I would like them to extend to me. When one of us violates that trust, now it’s game on.

With all of that in mind, here’s John…

THROWBACK THURSDAY: It’s all fun and games until Dominion Voting Systems sues you for a couple billion dollars

Today’s throwback post came to mind when I saw this bit of news regarding Infowars mogul Alex Jones and how he was back in court again this week:

Jones baselessly told his audience in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that the incident was staged. He has since acknowledged the shooting occurred, but only after the lawsuits were filed. He said in a 2019 sworn deposition that a “form of psychosis” caused him to make his false comments.

In the Connecticut case, where Jones is being sued by eight more Sandy Hook families, Judge Barbara Bellis issued a default judgment against the Infowars founder in November 2021 after he failed to comply with court orders.

Because the judge already ruled that Jones is liable, the jury is determining the amount in damages to award the plaintiffs. While the families have not specified a dollar figure, an attorney for the families asked jurors last week to “send a message” to the public with its decision.

I have yet to run into a student yet who told me they want to be Alex Jones when they grow up, but a number of them have told me how they don’t understand why people who are on talk radio (like Jones) or write on the web (like Jones) are allowed to say whatever they want without consequences. After all, the students note, professors like me are crawling all over them about adverbs because they MIGHT lead to a sense of opinion. Why do we in journalism classes get so nutsy about accuracy?

Well, here’s a good look at what can happen when you play fast and loose with reality and reality decides to fight back:

It’s all fun and games until Dominion Voting Systems sues you for a couple billion dollars

During the 2020 presidential election, multiple people made claims that the voting systems had been rigged to favor Democrat candidate Joe Biden. Several of then-President Donald Trump’s allies and associates took to various media platforms to repeat these allegations, arguing that the voting systems had been compromised and that any outcome which did not place Trump back in the White House was a result of fraud.

Dominion Voting Systems, which produces many of the electronic voting machines used in the election, apparently isn’t too thrilled about this, as the folks there have filed several lawsuits regarding these claims. It’s gotten so bad that some media outlets are keeping track of who is being sued, for how much and for what reason, like ESPN tracking the movement of NFL free agents.

The most recent suit is one that is most likely of interest to the folks reading the blog, as Dominion filed a $1.6 billion suit Friday against Fox News, alleging the company knew it was allowing lies about the election to proliferate:

In the lawsuit, Dominion argued that Fox and several of its on-air personalities elevated baseless claims about the voting company rigging the 2020 election and allowed falsehoods by their guests to go unchecked, including a wild claim that the company’s machines were manufactured in “Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chávez” and that Dominion’s algorithm manipulated votes so that then-President Trump would lose.

“Fox engaged in this knowing and reckless propagation of these enormous falsehoods in order to profit off these lies,” reads the lawsuit. “Fox wanted to continue to protect its broadcast ratings, catering to an audience deeply loyal to President Trump.”

The lawsuit argues that there are actual damages to the company’s brand, but also to the workers who are just trying to make a living. The suit notes that Fox’s conduct not only will cost the company more than $600 million in the next eight years, but also that front-line workers have been threatened.

Fox has noted that it will defend itself, having already filed several motions to dismiss and that the company “is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism.”

Here are a few things to take away from this and several other lawsuits filed in regard to the voting systems:

A FREE PRESS IS NOT A CONSEQUENCE-FREE PRESS: A lot of folks misinterpret the First Amendment to mean you are protected against all sorts of things when you publish content. The truth is that all the amendment guarantees is that the government shall not prevent you from publishing material. That’s basically it.

It doesn’t mean that other people can’t stop you, like the owner of a website where you post content, the publisher of a newspaper or a producer at a broadcast station. It also doesn’t mean you can get away with whatever you want without paying the price.

When you say something that is false and harmful, you can be in a lot of trouble, which is why professors push so hard on students to make ABSOLUTELY SURE on every fact in a story. It’s also why editors pick and pick and pick at stories with reporters, as to avoid any potential landmines.

If I get up on Fox News and tell the world that I have information supporting the notion that the chancellor of my university is running a cocaine ring out of the student union in exchange for getting away with a murder he committed in 1987, I’m going to be in a HECK of a lot of trouble because it’s not true and it’s going to harm him.

It also leads to the second point…

UNLIKELY, UNREAL AND COMPLETELY UNBELIEVABLE ARE ALL DIFFERENT THINGS: One of the dumber defenses in a Dominion suit is that of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. The company is suing her for $1.3 billion, arguing she knowingly spread a baseless claim that Dominion and another voting system company were working with the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to rig the election.

Powell has argued in motions to dismiss that her claims were so outlandish that nobody in their right mind would believe them:

It was just conjecture. No reasonable person would conclude those allegations were true statements of fact. Besides, in heated political arguments, people tend to exaggerate. You should dismiss the lawsuit or at least move it to my home state.

That’s essentially the defense offered by Sidney Powell’s lawyers to the $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Denver-based voting Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. Dominion provides voting equipment to more than 1,300 jurisdictions in 28 states including Colorado.

We’ve talked about this kind of claim earlier this year when porn mogul Larry Flynt died. The “no reasonable person” defense was at the core of his Supreme Court appeal, when the Rev. Jerry Falwell sued Flynt for publishing a spoof advertisement involving him. Flynt won the appeal with a unanimous decision, but before Powell pops open the champagne, I’d consider these issues:

Flynt was publishing a porn mag, known for all sorts of really outlandish stuff, including a photo of a woman being stuffed into a meat grinder. Powell was on nightly news outlets and other media platforms purporting to deliver truthful information gathered from inside sources.
Flynt’s ad claimed that the highly religious Falwell lost his virginity by having sex with his mother and a goat in an outhouse, which is almost the textbook definition of outlandish. Powell was claiming election fraud, something other countries had experienced and something that people within the government were also stating as fact.
Flynt was a strip-club owner who published pictures of naked people in magazines that had been banned in multiple cities. Powell had been a counselor to the president of the United States.

When it comes to the idea of hyperbole and satire, or otherwise outlandish things, you have a pretty high bar to clear if you want to be on safe side of that argument. Had Flynt claimed that Falwell stole money from his congregation, he would have likely been on much shakier ground, given that other high-profile preachers had been accused or convicted of such things. The same thing could be said had he claimed Falwell had slept with prostitutes or committed adultery, given the climate of the time. However, nobody reading the Campari spoof thought, “Wow! Reverend Jerry is a really kinky guy! Guess you learn something new every day…”

Powell’s defense in this case is that nobody could have believed a legal expert who worked with the president in regard to voting irregularities when she said the company responsible for voting reliability failed in its task. I’m really interested to see how that plays out, but more out of morbid curiosity to see if the judge can keep a straight face throughout the trial, not because it’ll set a new precedent.

THE MUDDLING OF OPINION AND FACT IS ALWAYS A CONCERN: When I teach basic media writing to students, one of the hardest things for them to figure out is what is an opinion and what is a fact. It often comes down to me scrawling “SAYS WHO?” on their paper 183 times before they understand what they can say and what they shouldn’t say. Occasionally, we would have the discussion of “You are wearing a black shirt. That is a fact. You are wearing a NICE black shirt. That is my opinion.”

Cable news organizations have long muddied the waters of what is opinion and what is fact, almost to the point where people either don’t know the difference or don’t care as long as it matches up with what they believe. I often wonder if a lot of high-profile people end up buying their own BS to the point that they themselves think, “If I believe it, it must be true.”

Journalism pushes harder on people to verify information, clarify where the information originated and remain rigorous in reporting only what we can prove. At least, that’s the goal we have in mind when it comes to separating opinion from fact.

To help us clarify the distinctions a bit better, the U.S. Court of Appeals offered a four-step examination as part of its ruling in Ollman v. Evans (1984) to help people see if a statement falls into the realm of fact or opinion:

Can the statement be proved true or false? Courts have held that factual statements can be proved true or false. A statement like “The New York Yankees have won 27 World Series championships” can be proved true or false by examining their records in the annals of baseball. The truth or falsity of a statement like “The New York Yankees are the best baseball team ever” cannot be determined, because it lacks several key elements for us to examine. In a defamation case, the plaintiff must prove that the material is false, and this can be the case only if the material of a factual, as opposed to an opinion-based, nature.

What is the common or ordinary meaning of the words? People often use euphemistic language in their daily discourse. If you referred to a sloppy person as a pig, that person might be upset, but they can’t win a libel suit by demonstrating that they are not “an omnivorous domesticated hoofed mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout for rooting in the soil, kept for its meat.” The common meaning that the person has poor personal hygiene or fails to keep their home neat and clean is clearly the way in which most people would interpret that remark.

What is the journalistic context of the remark? Who is saying something and the way in which they are saying it matter greatly in determining if something is a fact or not. For example, if you’re telling a joke involving two men walking into a bar, people are clearly expecting something different than if you are testifying in front of Congress. Content published on the news pages of a legacy media outlet is contextually different from a series of blog posts on a goofball-based website that would make the staff at the National Enquirer roll their eyes. The statements made on air during a newscast are contextually different from those made on a “morning zoo” radio show.

What is the social context of the remark? Where we tend to see opinions and where we tend to see facts often help define which are which. For example, a lecture on the biology related to procreation is expected to be based in facts, while two groups of protesters confronting each other outside an abortion clinic will be a more heated and opinionated exchange.

The Junk Drawer: Totally Positive Edition

There has GOT to be a spare COVID test in here…

Welcome to this edition of the junk drawer. As we have outlined in previous junk drawer posts, this is a random collection of stuff that is important but didn’t fit anywhere else, much like that drawer in the kitchen of most of our homes.

Let’s get going:

LET’S BE POSITIVE: For nearly two years, I managed to dodge, dive, dip, duck and dodge COVID, thanks to masking, my predilection toward isolation and getting every shot the doctor would put into me.

Last week, the streak ended, when I “started feeling weird” and Amy ran a test on me. It was supposed to take 15 minutes to post a result. Mine showed up in 3.

I spent the next seven days hunkered down in the milk house, trying to keep my family from getting it, which turned out to be a futile exercise, as Amy got it two days later. The initial cough was followed by full body aches, dry cough, fever dreams and more.

At one point, I woke up after 8 hours of sleep and my body literally wouldn’t move. I couldn’t command it to do anything, which naturally freaked me out. I fell back to sleep for another 8 hours and when I woke up I could move. It hurt like hell, but at least I was ambulatory.

I’m still half a mess, although the main symptoms have gone away. My mind doesn’t exactly work the way I’m used to yet and I’m exhausted by things like unloading the dishwasher or walking to the mailbox. I suppose this is a long way of saying, this is why the blog has been quiet these past couple weeks and please give me some latitude if I say something stupid on here.

HOT “SAID” SUMMER: I’ve wanted to share this for quite some time, as it captures the perfect feeling I get in reading intro media writing pieces when it comes to attributions. Shout out to Steve Chappell for his brilliance and meme skills:

MURDER-TRIAL JURY IS IN! FOR RESULTS SEE PARAGRAPH 128: I often quibble with professional journalists when it comes to lead-writing or the inverted pyramid. Pros tell me it can get boring to just tell people what happened or that there are more ways to tell a story than cramming everything into a 25-35 word lead.

I often push back with, well, you’re not writing to amuse yourselves, but rather to inform the people. Sometimes, we just want to know what the heck happened. And, yes, there are other ways to tell a story other than the 5W’s and 1H, so long as you are serving the audience.

I think we’re both right in some cases, but as the friend who sent me this article noted, “You have to actually know what you’re doing if you’re not going to use the inverted pyramid:”

I get that the story’s headline does tell the tale, but that’s not an excuse to basically pull a “Johnny from Airplaine!” in explaining what is going on.

PLEASE TELL ME WE DON’T HAVE A VIDEO OF THIS: I get that not every headline can be perfect, but you have GOT to be careful in structuring these things when they touch on delicate topics:

There are several ways to read this, and most of them are not good…

WHEN A BAD BREAK MEETS A BAD PAIRING: I get that some “junk drawer” type columns mix a lot of stuff from various parts of the news, but it’s probably always best to keep serious news in the serious bin and the more feature-y stuff in the feature bin.

At the very least make sure your headline break doesn’t send people who wish to end a pregnancy to Milwaukee’s Big Gig:

And Finally…

THAT’S THE SPIRIT! At the end of June, I finished up the main writing and editing on my latest textbook, “Exploring Mass Communication.” It’s an intro text that took about three years and 1,942 revisions to get to this point. With that in mind, I figured I’d take a little break until the semester started.

Two weeks later, we lost one faculty member to a gig in the dean’s office, another to a private sector job and I’m suddenly teaching mass com law. Of all the things I didn’t want to do, teaching law came in second (Chairing the department came first, so that’s how I got law, I s’pose… Well, that and I’m sure my department realized sending me out into the real world to talk to academics on our behalf made as much sense as peanut-buttering your car…)

With two weeks left before school starts, I need to build an entirely online version of a class I never taught, powering through on the reduced mental capacity of a COVID patient, all while making sure I’m getting ready for the rest of the term. Oh, and did I mention we’re up for our accreditation visit this fall?

I have been told it’s important to have the proper spirit throughout this, so here you go:

Needless to say, we’re going on break until after Labor Day unless something really dramatic happens. If you control dramatic things, please make sure they don’t happen until then.

Thanks.

Vince
(a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

Helpful tips for student media outlets that want to cover the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade situation

A draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion regarding the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked late Monday night on the Politico website. The 98-page document, written by Justice Samuel Alito, would reverse the nearly 50-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade and eliminate the constitutionally protected right to abortions in the United States, if it remains unchanged when the court formally renders its opinion.

I have a hard time imagining that many student media outlets wouldn’t have a vested interest in covering this situation as it unfolds. With that in mind, this post does not aim to direct the opinion of those students, nor to take a stand on the issue itself. The point of this post is to provide student journalists with some help in navigating some truly risky waters when choosing what, when and how to present information to their readers on this topic.

First, let’s start off with a few key things you need to be aware of before you even start thinking about publishing something here:

You will not change most readers’ minds about anything on this topic. Most of what people think and believe about this issue will have been codified in their minds, hearts and souls long before you showed up. A good friend, who was perhaps prescient, posted this explanation from The Oatmeal of why it’s hard to change minds or get people to listen on certain issues the other day and it bears a look. Trying to move the needle on this issue among readers is going to be as successful as bailing out a sinking boat with a pasta strainer.
There aren’t two sides to this. There are many facets. Certain topics tend to bring out the extremes when it comes to public opinion. Yes, there are probably people out there who believe that life begins when a man unhooks a woman’s bra. Conversely, there are probably people out there who believe there should be free abortion punch cards available at Starbucks. Those people do not represent the majority of people who have an interest in this issue. If you want to dig into this issue, you need to look beyond the loudest voices screaming threadbare talking points. It’ll take work.
This is not law yet. This is a leaked first draft of a document that the public wasn’t supposed to see, at least not based on tradition and protocol. The information, including how many justices voted to make this a majority opinion, who they are, how tied to this they are, how much they support the language and more, is not codified through official channels or publicly declared by the court itself. A lot can happen in multiple aspects of this case, including what the final opinion looks like, if Congress will make moves to solidify abortion rights and other things nobody has thought about yet. When covering this issue, it’s crucial to keep that in mind when making declarative statements, asking questions of sources and writing content (particularly headlines where space limits can lead to fact errors).
You are running out of semester. TV shows can be great when they use the “cliffhanger” approach at the end of a season. News doesn’t benefit from that kind of situation, so be aware of how much time you have left to cover this topic, how many issues you have yet to publish and how those things should factor into your approach here. A half-baked “get-er-done” story that runs in your last issue can likely lead to more harm than good when you lack the ability to correct any errors, follow up on any developments or otherwise continue telling the story. You might have one shot at this, so make sure it does what it needs to do.

With those things in mind, here are some tips and hints on how to approach this topic:

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: If it sounds like I harp on this every time I write something, it’s only because that’s exactly what I’m doing. This isn’t the time or the issue where you should assume everyone is “exactly like me” or guess about how much of your readership feels a certain way about the topic. Even within the newsroom itself, people probably hold differing views on if this is the best thing or the worst thing ever to happen in this country. It’s also likely that many of those views will come as a surprise to folks once they are vocalized.

One key thing to do is to really assess who reads your paper and what matters most to them. In a case like this, it’s a little too late to do a readers survey, but you can look for some breadcrumbs that might be out there for the finding. Some private, religious schools might clearly lean more pro-life, but look around for pockets of dissent. Some liberal, public schools might lean more pro-choice, but look around for pockets of dissent.

Look for groups on campus that have voiced their opinions on topics before and see how large, engaged, involved and representative they are of the larger whole. Look for previous coverage in your publication of this issue to see who is out there and what they had to say. Talk to people in the newsroom and the classroom about this with the idea of finding out not just what they think, but also what their roommates, friends, teammates and peers think.

Get a handle on what kind of room you will be playing to when you publish your work.

RESEARCH LIKE HELL: You are looking at the possible reversal of a court decision that likely is older than some of your professors. In the nearly five decades since the court handed down its ruling in this case, a lot of stuff has happened. Your going to want to be the smartest person in the room on this topic before you start interviewing people and writing stories.

Learn as much as you can about the original case, the ruling and what changed because of it. Look at the other challenges to it over the years, including the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case of 1992, to see what has transpired over the past 50 years or so. Look into the history of abortions within the United States to figure out what happened during times when the procedure was legal and illegal. You’ll likely need to spend some serious time digging into this, but the last thing you want to do interview someone without having a full view of the facts. This is one topic in which the stakes are too high to risk getting snowed by a source with a bias.

Here are some tips and hints for potential stories:

LOCAL IMPACT: The court ruling, if it becomes final in its current form, would essentially kick the decision of whether abortions should be legal back to the states. States have had widely varying laws regarding this procedure, as you can see from the series of maps from the Washington Post. Figuring out what will happen to your readers will matter a great deal in how you approach this topic. Some states have laws that go into effect the minute the Court reverses Roe. Others have laws that remain on the books from decades ago that simply stop getting overridden by the Feds. Others are looking for laws that will remove or improve access to abortions once all of this gets sorted out.

Everyone else will be talking at the federal/macro level on this. You should explain it at the local/micro level. This could entail everything from what your student health center is allowed to provide to if any private businesses in the area provide this service and will no longer be allowed to do so.

Your job is not to tell people the sky is falling or the world is finally going to be right. Your job is to factually outline what it is that has happened, will happen and could happen if this draft becomes final.

UNPACKING “UNPRECEDENTED” AGAIN: If COVID taught me anything, it was to hate the word “unprecedented.” However, this situation has rolled out more cases in which that word will likely apply. Start looking at them:

Talk to local legal scholars about the leak. Folks are initially saying this “has never happened in modern history.” That’s a dodge within a couch of an argument, given “modern history” could be anywhere from post-Civil War era to since last Tuesday. Find out from people who study this stuff how rare this actually is, what the value/problem with such a leak can be and the likely impact the leak will have on the final draft.
Talk to local experts in history and law regarding an overturn of this nature. How often does the court fail to apply precedent in a situation like this? What issues have seen this kind of shift before? What results usually occur in a situation when the Court zigs like this, both in terms of the decision at hand as well as other cases that could follow?
Talk to local political experts to see what kinds of steps the executive and/or legislative branches might take in response to this judicial decision. There is already a rumbling about getting rid of the filibuster and trying to crank through something in the House and Senate that would counterbalance the court decision. Pro-choice advocates have noted President Joe Biden’s relative silence on the issue, as well as his history voting on the topic. Will he look to define his presidency with a move on this topic? I don’t know, but I’d surely ask someone smarter than me about it.

HISTORY TRIP: Generations of people have existed in a world in which this topic was hotly debated, but also clearly codified into law. Generations of people also lived through a time before Roe v. Wade, so it would be valuable to find out what things were like back then.

Most of what I have heard falls into oft-repeated phrases like “back-alley procedures,” “under-cover-of-night travel,” “unscrupulous and dangerous” and more. What that actually means in terms of true history is beyond me in many cases, so finding people who can better provide context, truth and history will be helpful. (The 19th did a piece on this topic not too long ago that followed women’s memories through their experiences in the pre-Roe era, if you are interested.) Professors at your school who study history, women’s studies and other scholastic areas that traverse this topic could be helpful, as could sources who were involved in either side of the struggle back then.

It would also be interesting to look at both current and historical data regarding the number of overall procedures that occurred in your coverage area, if that is available. The thing most people forget in talking about overturning Roe v. Wade is that it won’t eliminate abortions. It will just make them illegal and harder to come by. The numbers might tell a story both “back when” and “right now.”

PERSONAL STORIES: This is one of those that really has a strong risk/reward element to it. It is highly probable that you have students at your school who, in some way, connect strongly to this topic. How they connect, what they are willing to share and to what degree the reporter can work with these sources will determine the overall value of something like this. If you are unsure as to how to proceed with this, I strongly recommend you talk to your adviser, smart professors who have experience in the field and other journalism folk who can help guide you.

FINAL NOTE: The one last important thing to keep in mind on something like this is that the duty to report is not the same as the duty to publish. You might do an inordinate amount of work, only to find a weak or wobbly story that might not do the job you had hoped it would. There is no rule in journalism that dictates you publish it and take your chances. In many cases, caution is the better part of valor. This is probably one of those cases if you feel the story isn’t where it needs to be.

That said, don’t let fear of public reaction dissuade you from running a quality story. This is one of those topics where you will inevitably upset someone, so disabuse yourself of the notion that a well-reported, well-researched, factually based story will garner universal applause. If it’s good, run it.

In God We Trust. Everybody Else Gets Recorded

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has found himself playing a lot of defense this week, as recordings of his calls in and around Jan. 6 hit the media. The recordings appear to directly contradict McCarthy’s frequent statements that he did not and would not tell President Trump to resign in the wake of the Capitol Riots:

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, came under fire from some of his fellow party members, after an audio recording showed him saying that then-President Donald Trump should resign over the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

The comments, which McCarthy had denied hours before the recording emerged, could undermine his widely known ambition to become House speaker next year if Republicans take control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, as expected.

We could spend an entire post with clips of politicians of every stripe saying they never said something, followed by audio or video evidence that shows they said that EXACT THING. It’s why this joke rings so true:

Q: How can you tell when politicians are lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Instead, let’s talk about the importance of recording everything you can shake a stick at when you interview sources. Here are a few things to keep in mind while doing that:

Rules for recordings

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press notes that federal law allows you to record calls and other similar communication with just one party to the call knowing that the recording is happening. In addition, 38 states have adopted similar “one-party consent” rules, which allows you to record someone without their consent. The other 12 states require that all parties involved in a phone call or other similar discussion consent to the recording. In almost no circumstance can you record a call to which you are not a party, a concept often referred to as wiretapping.

You can find a full listing of the states and their laws on recording on here on the committee’s website.

What you “can” do doesn’t include what you “should” do, in that trust and credibility play a pretty big role in what we do. Thus, ethically, it’s better to just ask people right up front if you can record the call or record them in person when you’re conducting the interview in most cases. If you’re trying to catch someone in a lie, that might not work, but if you’re interviewing the Queen of Corn Elise Jones about her exciting duties that go with the title, I doubt you’ll need to be surreptitious.

Also, for all the grumping journalism traditionalists do over email interviews (and I include myself among the grumps), the use of email does provide you with a written transcript of what the person said, so it’s a lot harder for them to cry foul when the stuff hits the fan over their comments.

What if a source says no?

One of the risks of behaving ethically is that someone might tell you not to record the interview. In that case, you have a few options.

Explain why you want to record them (to provide the most complete record, to back up your notes in case you misunderstand something, to allow you to be more conversational because you aren’t burying your head in your notes), in hopes that this will soften their stance.

If that doesn’t work, make the case that this is good for both of you because it protects both of you from having mistakes get into the public sphere. It’s also good to have that record for future examination, in case something needs to be looked back upon.

If none of that works, you’re kind of stuck between doing the interview without the recorder or not doing the interview. It’s a choice, but be ready to make that choice either way.

How best to record

Before you do any recording, you should have tested out your recorder in a few different environments. See what kind of range you get, the overall sound quality the device provides and if anything you would normally encounter in an interview would limit the device’s effectiveness. (If the source is playing with a pencil on the desk where your recorder sits, will you hear nothing but a series of TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP sounds?)

People can get jittery when they’re being recorded. Interviews themselves can freak people out, so the idea that every word they say is being preserved for all time can make things a little more anxiety-provoking. (A broadcast student of mine referred to interviews that go to hell because of a recorder fear as the source having “red light syndrome.”)

That little red light on a recorder can be a powerful tool, so it’s best to keep it away from them. If you have a recorder that can pick up sound from a bit of a distance, you can keep the recorder in your hand and flip over a piece of your reporter’s notebook to cover the thing. Eventually the source will forget it’s there and relax, I would hope.

If that won’t work, I try to at least obscure the red light or place it in an unobtrusive space. The goal is for it to blend into the background. If your recorder is so weak that you almost have to lodge the thing into the source’s nasal cavity to get a decent recording, buy something better.

Best Practices for Recording

It makes a lot of sense to purchase a separate recording device if you have the ability and funds to do so. Depending on if you need broadcast quality audio or just something you can hear and understand, costs can range between $20 or so to upwards of a couple hundred.

It is possible to use your phone to record in a pinch, but a lot can go wrong, including an app that only records a few minutes because it’s a “free” edition (and they never told you that) or an app that gets knocked off any time you get a text or alert. Also, battery issues are pretty prominent when it comes to most of my students’ phones, as they’re usually on their hands and knees in the classroom before class, searching for a power outlet.

For recording phone conversations, that mini-recorder plus your phone on speaker works well for low-grade audio. If you have a landline, which most of you probably don’t unless you work in an office that has these dinosaurs, you can get a phone coupler for a couple bucks online that allows you to jack your recorder right into the phone itself. (In days before this technology, reporters would drill holes in their phones and wire in recording devices. It looked cool, but the tech was risky.)

In any case, here are some basic tips to help you out:

Make sure your recorder is functional and ready for recording. Do a test recording, check the batteries, bring extra batteries and generally make sure this thing will do the job.
Test the recorder in the environment you’ll be recording, when possible. If you have some annoying background noise, see if you can move the interview elsewhere or tell your roommate to turn down the Cardi B. for 20 minutes.
Start the recorder before the interview and ask the person if they would allow you to interview. This seems counterintuitive, but the goal is to capture the person’s answer on the recording. If they say yes, the thing is already going and they didn’t see you turn it on or place it somewhere so they aren’t freaking out as much. Plus you have the confirmation on “tape.” (or whatever term we’re using for digital stick recorders)
If the source says no and won’t change their mind, pick up the device and shut it off in front of them to clearly show you’re abiding by their wishes. It’ll help with trust and credibility. Then, be prepared for hand cramps.
Keep the recorder going all the way until you are out of the presence of the interview subject. Even after you agree you’re “done,” things can come up or other questions can happen. You want those recorded.
Immediately check your recorder after you are outside of the interview to make sure it worked. If it didn’t, you can pour some additional work into fleshing out your notes while it’s still fresh in your mind. If you figure out what went wrong and now the recorder works, you might be able to run back in for a quick follow up question or two before the source is involved in something else.

Hope this helps. Any other suggestions or thoughts on this are always appreciated.

Vince

(a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

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