Important if true

Some large U.S. news media appear to have learned nothing from the lies spread by professional journalists after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Five months ago, several allegedly reputable news media reported the name of a person police were seeking.

They got the name wrong, though.

This morning, several large broadcast news organizations reported the name of someone who shot several people at the Navy Yard in Washington.

Then they withdrew the report. The name, apparently, was wrong.

Online, though, is forever. Both names are still widely available, and likely will be indefinitely.

Carpenters have a saying: Measure twice, cut once.

The journalistic equivalent is: Get it first, but first get it right.

In the immediate aftermath of a bombing or a mass shooting, nobody knows what is happening.

Journalists need to gather as much information as they can safely, and report damning information such as names with great care and only after confirmation.

Over time, the organizations that demonstrate responsible reporting should benefit from the resulting public trust.

That probably means being able to charge a premium for their information.

The sloppy ones should ‘fess up and take as their mission statement a traditional newspaper headline for unconfirmed reports, demonstrated a century and a half ago in the New York Times:

“Important if true.”

Optimistic Journalism students

The second-year students in the Red River College Creative Communications Journalism major are a bunch of optimists.

For their first blog posts of this semester I assigned them to write about the business of journalism, specifically the jobs available.

Their responses, which are linked on the right side of this page, are almost unanimously upbeat.

They do not subscribe to the journalism-is-dead school of thought that is so difficult to avoid, especially online.

They clearly see themselves finding paid employment in the field.  

Their writing can be testy, as is Meg Crane’s blog:

"But isn't that a dying profession?" is the response I most hate to hear (and most often get) from people I tell I'm majoring in journalism.

First of all, journalism isn't really a profession...

Second, this isn't the case at all and I'm getting a little tired of defending my career choice.

Crane is not just talking. She is editor-in-chief of The Projector, the college’s student newspaper. This year The Projector plans to publish more material than ever online.

Nearly all of last year’s Journalism majors are already working in the business – from Toronto to northern British Columbia.

Some even got jobs in Winnipeg!

Just as important, most of the young people laid off in 2012 by the Winnipeg Free Press are back working in the field, some of them right back at the paper.

So this year’s CreComm J majors have cause for optimism.

‘My assignment has a sunburn’

Last week I participated in a panel discussion aimed at introducing new instructors to Red River College.

These instructors are experts in their fields, from engineering to a variety of social services. But they are new to teaching.

As panelists shared some of our experiences, I mentioned a couple of the stupid things I did as a rookie instructor.

Thrust into teaching, fresh from a rather cutthroat corner of the corporate world, I did not understand that students are not employees.

I provided harsh feedback on assignments, judging them by unfairly high standards unfamiliar to the students.

One of my favourite written comments was “HUH?”

One day, as I handed back marked work in a class, a student jumped up and lamented, “My assignment has a sunburn!” When she waved her paper, all I could see was my comments in red ink.

Talk about “the awkward moment when.”

I realized how intimidating my comments were, and how unfair.

So I changed my evil ways. Well, some of them.

These days I mark in pencil, and I save “HUH?” for the play of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Toronto Blue Jays.

Ezra Levant is right for once

A Sun Media columnist has finally written a piece I agree with.

The headline “Hey hey, ho! ho! They don’t know” on Ezra Levant’s recent column may not scan, but as an attack on journalists it makes some sense.

Levant, who makes his living excoriating those who do not agree with his far-right point of view, here criticizes journalists for simplistic coverage of protest rallies.

He writes that he attended a recent rally of about 50 people in Hamilton protesting against the proposed reversal of the direction in which a Canadian pipeline carries crude oil.

His analysis of the usual news coverage of such events is, unfortunately, accurate:

The quick and easy formula for reporters is to make a rough estimate of how many protesters attend, take some pictures of the most colourful signs and costumes, get a bumper-sticker-deep slogan quote from a spokesman, and you’re done.

Levant says he could have accomplished that in five minutes, but he stayed for two hours, interviewing the participants and learning that their knowledge of the proposal was indeed sketchy.

Then he Googled the names of half a dozen protesters and learned that – shock! horror! three of them were from London (Ontario, presumably) and another “was from out of town too.”

So far, this is solid reporting. Levant, though, can’t leave it there.

But it got darker. Because the more I looked, the more I realized these protesters were not just idealistic young people trying to heal the world. They were dominated by an inner circle of hard-core anarchists.

He does not report that these anarchists attended the protest, so readers cannot assess how they exercised this dominance.

But Levant is right on his main point: Lazy journalism, driven by unforgiving deadlines, presents incomplete and misleading versions of even simple events such as a protest rally.

The more a viewer or reader knows about an issue, the less satisfactory he or she finds this sort of coverage.

The solution? Journalists should stop covering protests unless they can explain the issues involved in a bit of detail.

Yes, stop covering most protests. After a few outraged phone calls to assignment editors, the protesters may just wither away.

Not so, of course, Ezra Levant.

He stopped loving us today

This headline mawkish enough for you?

Hope so; we’re talkin’ country music.

Specifically, George Jones, who has died at 81, posthumously pissing off people who died of cirrhosis at 41, 51, 61 or 71.

Many obituaries have cited He Stopped Loving Her Today as Possum’s greatest hit, and no doubt that song has propelled many a tear into many a beer.

But it lacks an essential element of the Great Country Song: Self-pity.

Check out George pitying himself half a century ago in She Thinks I Still Care.

In Friday’s Winnipeg concert, Leonard Cohen called George one of the greatest country singers.

Then he sang Choices, one of George’s many apologies for himself.

You remember Choices? That’s the ditty where George rhymes “born” and “wrong.”

Now that’s country.

Common sense breaks out in newspaper business!

Common sense has broken out at the Winnipeg Free Press, and that’s news.

The largest news medium in our part of Canada is about to sign a five-year collective agreement with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

The paper’s employees, about 450 “inside workers” including journalists and about the same number of part-time carriers, ratified the agreement on the weekend.

This is the first time the two sides have agreed on a new contact before the current one expires.

Gone are the traditional short-sightedness and pig-headedness exhibited by both sides.

Replacing them are more realistic views of the challenges facing mainstream news media as they strive to survive and even succeed in the Wild West of online information.

Disclosure: I negotiated for the Free Press as a minion of the extremely short-sighted and pig-headed Thomson Newspapers of late memory, against this same union in its own more short-sighted and pig-headed days.

This new agreement should lift the doom-and-gloom atmosphere on Mountain Avenue – and on McDermot Avenue at the News Café.

Journalists in particular, relatively well paid as they are, dreaded a repetition of the 16-day picket line in 2008.

Strikes and lockouts at newspapers these days always end badly: fewer jobs, often less pay, and lower sales and profits for the companies.

At the Free Press there will be no immediate pay raise for current employees, and only a three per cent increase over the contract.

But I think some of the biggest news is that the union has backed down on one of its traditional principles and accepted a two-tier pay system.

Staff hired after July 1 will receive 19 per cent less in salaries, CEP says.

Not great news, but not that bad, either.

As an instructor who helps turn out new journalists each year in Winnipeg, I expect the Free Press now will be able to hire more of them.

Now that this deal is done, here’s a debating point: Which is in more trouble, the maligned newspaper business or the unions that have traditionally represented its employees?

You might not have heard much about it but the CEP, losing members across the country, is merging with the once-mighty Canadian Auto Workers, mired in the same involuntary downsizing.

What kind of union will be around in five years to negotiate the next contract at the Free Press?

Canada should learn from South Africa

South Africa’s legal system is doing an admirable job of demonstrating how it does justice.

Magistrate Desmond Nair’s decision today granting bail to Oscar Pistorius on a charge of murdering his girlfriend was broadcast live on audio around the world.

Even better, cameras in the courtroom showed video and still pictures of the accused and the spectators.

Canada, unfortunately, still forbids such openness.

Not only are journalists here banned from reporting the prosecution and defence arguments in most bail proceedings, but cameras are verboten in courtrooms.

The South African experience refutes several arguments against cameras in the courts.

First, even in this sensational, emotional case that fascinated people around the world, broadcasting and recording the proceedings did not pervert the course of justice.

So forget the O.J. Simpson trial, where American lawyers who fancied themselves entertainers played to the cameras.

Second, broadcasting did not mean that sensational segments pushed out reasoned argument. In fact, the live broadcast forced us to listen to the magistrate’s entire two-hour reasoning process.

As Canadian lawyer Bob Sokalski and other media-law practitioners argue in court and outside it, most citizens cannot attend legal proceedings. They rely on journalists to tell them what is going on. Video and audio recording and broadcasting are essential tools of journalists.

You may have already heard me make this argument.

Now South Africa has provided an example of not only how cameras in the courts could work, but how they actually do work.