The Laughing Wolf

What Is A News Story, Papa?

Joe Katzman, my blogfather, and I have been having an interesting discussion over the last couple of days, and it is one where I feel we have been talking past each other a bit. Also, it is a subject that deserves some consideration here, because it is a topic of interest to you, as a blog reader and news recipient.

The ultimate question Joe asked is, “What makes a story news?” This is not what he asked, directly, but it was the root question. His question was why the recent Pvt. Lynch rescue story was news at all?

Let’s tackle the easy one first. What makes a story news? Simple, it has impact or importance to society as a whole, or at least to the majority of the particular segment of the public that consumes your product, be it a broadcast or a magazine. Importance can be summed up as death, fire, flood, famine, earthquake, or other ravage of nature or man. It means that resources are damaged or lost, that transportation and/or communication are damaged or destroyed, and that the public business – commerce and otherwise – will be disrupted.

Human interest stories were originally done as ways to illustrate pure news. The human touch resonated with the reader, then later with the listener/viewer. They then moved into a full genre of their own, independent of the news of the day, for good and for ill. For the good in that they can bring things to the surface that need to be dealt with, and for the ill in that they allow a great deal of manipulation to take place without a good system of checks and balances. For every Cooke or Blair caught, there are likely many more who use or abuse the system to manipulate towards a particular viewpoint. The system is all too often more lax on human interest than on news. Such stories can also be much harder for blogs and other independent outlets to check out and verify, since changing or hiding identities is a much more common practice with them.

If you are thinking that most of what is passed off as news today really is news, you win! Most of what gets done as news is not news, it is fluff, human interest, and things that are not news but that research has shown to increase and/or retain viewers and readers. What little real news that is given also is presented in a way (slanted) towards the biases of the people in charge and in ways that marketing research again suggests will encourage readership and viewership. That is why on truly important stories of the day I try to go to as many CREDIBLE sources as I can, because comparing between them lets facts come out and biases and outright lies be exposed.

Why was the story in the Toronto Star news at all? Wasn’t it just another President-landing-in-a-flight-suit story type thing? Joe makes some very good points in that the only way the rescue could be “fake” was if Pvt. Lynch was not in Iraqi hands. She was, we went in, got her, came out. Little or no discussion on resistance, treatment, and more at first, and not a lot afterwards.

On one hand, and in the most importance sense in many ways, Joe is right. This is not a story, because she was in Iraqi hands and we went in and got here. No one disputes that, so her rescue cannot have been faked.

On the other hand, he is wrong because the charge alleged in the story was that it was staged. Such an allegation is news.

It is news, and newsworthy, because it would mean at best that the Coalition of the Willing and the United States of America had screwed up, and that at worst these same groups had willfully and deliberately kept Pvt. Lynch an enemy prisoner of war for propaganda purposes. If true, either requires debate and action to correct either poor judgment or a deliberate abuse of power so that such does not happen again.

Now, much of this is not direct allegation, but is done by implication. My real problem with the story in question is that it does a lot of implying that seems designed to put Coalition operations in this regard in as bad a light as possible. It implies that the rescue teams were wantonly and willfully destructive with their actions. It implies that they did so knowing there was no opposition, and therefore no valid reason for their actions. It implies that such was Keystone Cops at best and Machiavellian planning and operations at worst. In short, it seems to be doing all it can to diminish, demean, and defame all those involved.

For me, that is the true story here. That is why I went into it the way I did. And yes, I did use the word fake in my lede, though it was not truly accurate. Joe is right, the event was not faked, and the story in question only implies that it was staged. Yet, that is a distinction lost on most readers. The difference between staged and faked is one that will be missed, and I chose to go with the other term because it is what would be perceived and what was also being used on the news. Another dictum of journalism is to go with what your audience knows and is familiar with, and I really do need to quit doing that. My audience here knows better and deserves better.

If there were any truth to the allegations made in this story, directly or by implication, then it is newsworthy. It should be, and would have been, pounced on by organizations who would see the ratings coup, the prizes and awards, and the chance to become the next Woodward and Bernstein. That the Star and the reporter did not do what was needed to do this for themselves speaks volumes to me.

So that brings us to the second point, the other way it is newsworthy. Was the story nothing more than a smear campaign? Was it an act by elements of The Media to discredit that which they opposed? Was it just another case of liberal extremists not only never saying they were wrong or sorry, but trying their best to fling mud on those they can’t touch directly? Could it even be something worse, like deliberate lying on the part of the reporter? These questions are valid and have been raised elsewhere in blogs and even in The Media. That makes it newsworthy in and of itself.

So, to answer the questions: No, I really don’t think this story was news, and were I the editor who got it, I would have had a lot of questions that would have had to be answered before I ran it.

It became news, however, because it was published. The questions it raised were intriguing, no matter which way it was approached. All of those questions deserve answers, and I simply regret that I have only been able to provide questions and not answers. Some of the answers can only come from the publication and the reporter; all the others must come from people asking hard questions in places to where I currently have no access. All I, any of us, can do is hope that they will be asked and request those that can – such as Fox, SkyNews, etc. – do so, and soon.

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