Reporting and Writing II Opinion and colour I still do not see how a reporter attempting to describe a situation involving some sort of ethical conflict can do it with sufficient demonstrable neutrality to fulfil some arbitrary concept of objectivity. It never occurred to me, in such a situation, to be anything other than subjective, and as obviously so as I could manage to be. James Cameron Point of Departure James Cameron witnessed two bomb tests in the Pacific in Read his report from the Daily Express. Is it a news story or a feature? What is James Camerons opinion of the bomb test? Is the report fair and balanced? Is the report written effectively? Why? News or feature? BothSome events have news value just by being rare or unusual. In 1946 the atom bomb was new. Its now-iconic explosion was unfamiliar. Cameron knew that his readers needed a description of what these weapons looked and sounded like. The techniques of a feature writer emphasising his own impressions, detailed description and a chronological structure serve the purposes of delivering a striking news story. What is Camerons opinion? AntiCameron had a front row seat for the development of nuclear weaponry, witnessing the first tests at Bikini Atoll in Over the next 12 years, 23 bombs were tested in the Pacific Ocean. He wrote of the terrifying power that was being wielded by the American and British military. In 1957 the British government formally changed its policy on nuclear weapons, and rejected a plan for nuclear disarmament. Cameron was among a group of academics, scientists and activists who founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in November that year. Was it fair and balanced? BalanceI may not always have been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth, and that the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a very serious dimension. James Cameron He continued to write about nuclear disarmament, and consistently campaigned for it. Does this cause a problem for his journalism? Was it fair and balanced? TruthI may not always have been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth, and that the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a very serious dimension. This is a quote you might see used. The next line is usually amputated: It can easily be misinterpreted. Was it fair and balanced? BeingYet as I see it - and it seems to be me the simplest of scrupulousdisciplines - the journalist is obliged to present his attitude as vigorously and persuasively as he can, insisting that it is his attitude, to be examined and criticised in the light of every contrary argument, which he need not accept but must reveal. There is a distinct difference between committed journalism, which is honest, and propaganda, which is not. What sources are used? MilitaryWhile aboard the Appalachian, journalists were given daily briefings by the military and scientists about how the test would work and the possible outcomes. This story could have been written in a more traditional format, with quoted sources explaining the background. But PersonalThat would have been too sterile and formal. Cameron wanted to get across the enormity and horror of a nuclear explosion. He filters the whole story through his own experience, to maximise the impact of the description. Well written? StructureThe first half is informative it describes exactly how the bomb test site looks and why, and what will happen. The second half is colour it describes, eloquently, the impressions, sights and sounds of the bomb blast and reacts to it. The story isnt written in a hard news style, but its structure is familiar. It gives the reader the facts before the reaction. Cameron doesnt let himself get ahead of the reader. Well written? VividIt was a spheroid, then an uprising wavering thing like a half filled balloon, then a climbing unsteady dome like a mosque in a dream. It looked as though it were throbbing. Then, just as I remembered the sound of the explosion, it finished its journey and arrived. It was not a bang, it was a rumble, not overloud, but it thudded into all the corners of the morning like a great door slammed in the deepest hollows of the sea. Well written? ArchaicRemember, it was written in The writing is vividly visual in a way that might not always be appropriate Cameron described a scene which few of his readers would have seen, in a time before every home had a television set. It works here but you might want to think twice before applying the same level of detail to a description of a field in Swanscombe or a motorway crash. Always match your style to your subject, and the needs of your readers. James Cameron CareerCameron started out as an illustrator, creating images to accompany grisly tales of murder published in magazines by DC Thompson. He moved to the Weekly News in 1935 as a general reporter, before becoming a sub-editor for the Scottish Daily Express. After being rejected for military duty during the Second World War, he was moved to the Daily Express in Fleet Street and became deputy chief sub. He eventually persuaded the editors to give him a reporting job. He became foreign correspondent. James Cameron CareerAfter leaving the Express he worked for the Picture Post and the News Chronicle. He was on the front lines in Korea, where he reported on the first challenge to the authority of the UN after its creation (he was not impressed), and went behind enemy lines in Vietnam, where he was one of very few reporters who attempted to tell the story of the North Vietnamese. He also trekked for days through avalanche-ravaged mountains to report on the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Lose two jobs to save a career A quitter?Cameron twice lost reporting jobs to stay true to his principles. In 1950 John Strachey became war minister in the Labour Government at about the same time as an atomic physicist, Klaus Fuchs, was revealed to be a Soviet Spy. In 1935 Strachey had written a book which included some support for Soviet Communism. The Evening Standard linked the two in a shock headline: FUCHS AND STRACHEY: A GREAT NEW CRISIS Cameron, a left winger, decided he could no longer work for Lord Beaverbrook, who owned the Standard and the Express. He resigned in protest. Lose two jobs to save a career A quitterI had no part in the Standard campaign but its proprietor was paying my salary and I could hardly ignore that. I was the chief foreign correspondent of the Express, which seemed to argue a measure of responsibility. That day I wrote a letter saying that I did not see how I could identify myself with the firms technique and that I had better go. Lose two jobs to save a career Then in They were skeletons - they were puppets of skin with South Koreasinews for strings - their faces were a terrible, translucent grey, and they cringed like dogs. They were manacled with chains or bound to each other with ropes. [] Sometimes they moved enough to scoop a handful of water to drink from the black puddles around them. Any deviation from their attitude brought a gun butt on their skulls. Finally they were herded, the lowest common denominator of human degradation, into trucks, with the numb air of men going to their deaths. Lose two jobs to save a career South KoreaThese prisoners were of course not convicts, not prisoners of war; they were political hostages of the South Korean administration for whose integrity the United States and Britain and the United Nations were at that moment fighting. They were not North Koreans, but South Koreans in South Korea, whose crime - or alleged crime, since few of them had been accorded the formality of a trial - was that they had been named as opponents of the Synghman Rhee regime. Lose two jobs to save a career I quit again!Cameron sent the story about the treatment of South Korean prisoners to his editor at the Picture Post. It had been written with the best restraint and care of which I was capable; I had done my best to drain it of emotion, and it was documented in detail. Since even the most arid words can be pejorative in such situations, I had made sure that they were substantiated by a considerable file of photographs. It was never published by the Post. Lose two jobs to save a career A disasterThe story was ready to be printed when the Posts owner ordered it be pulled from the edition. The story was then leaked to the Daily Worker, a socialist paper, which printed it in full. Its appearance in the Worker was the most damaging. Rather than being seen as a responsible attempt to hold the UN and the American military to account, the story was seen as a piece of anti-Western, pro- Communist propaganda. The Picture Posts editor was fired. Cameron resigned. He vowed never to work on a newspapers permanent staff again, and began a new career as a freelance. Context is everything Camerons It can easily be misinterpreted. warning Cameron urged for reporters to engage intellectually, emotionally and compassionately in their stories - but his experience in South Korea highlights the danger involved. Reporters do not publish in a vacuum. Stories appear in newspapers or magazines that have their own political identity, and which are owned by people with often very well-known agendas. Always think about how your stories will be received. Martha Gellhorn Read the excerpt from High Explosive for Everyone. What sources are used? Is it fair and balanced? Is it written effectively? Why? Martha Gellhorn Lost faithGellhorn revised the introduction to her collection of war writing, The Face of War, several times after its first publication in Each time, she reflects the fears of the day nuclear brinksmanship, Vietnam, the rise of a single global superpower, and American empire-building. At each step she reflects on the role of journalism, and the nature of her own reporting. Each of them is worth reading, and they are reprinted at the back of the 1998 edition. Martha Gellhorn 1959 introWhen I was young I believed in the perfectability of man, and in progress, and thought of journalism as a guiding light. If people were told the truth, if dishonor and injustice were clearly shown to them, they would at once demand the saving action, punishment of wrong-doers, and care for the innocent It took nine years, and a great depression, and two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender without war, to break my faith in the benign power of the press. Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit. War reporting LimitationsA single reporter cannot tell the full story of a war. Too often, the side they see is one that is favourable to their home nation either by being fed information and statistics by its government or military, or by being embedded. Gellhorn acknowledged this problem in Vietnam in 1988: After all this time I still cannot think calmly about that war. It was the only war I reported on the wrong side. Sources GellhornThe excerpt begins with Gellhorn writing about her own experiences, and her life in war-torn Madrid is the thread that holds her stories together. But her story is weaved around the stories of many others. Real peopleHotel concierge, a maid, a coffee house, a bar, staff and customers in a shoe shop, women queuing for food. Thats just in a 600 word excerpt of the story the full version also includes a hotel-cum-hospital where she talks to wounded soldiers, and the audience for a play which is interrupted frequently by explosions. War happens to people one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God, which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination. Martha Gellhorn The Face of War Well written? Bringing it allInside a shoe shop, five women are trying on shoes. back homeTwo girls are buying summery sandals, sitting by the front window of the shop. After the third explosion, the salesman says politely: "I think we had better move farther back into the shop. The window might break and cut you. Spanish civilians had to live their lives with a war raging around them. Gellhorns style is designed to make readers far from the conflict understand how the horror of conflict has intruded into normal lives. The focus on the everyday amplifies how terrible the war is. But how could I write about war, what did I know and for whom could I write? What made a story to begin with? Didnt something gigantic and conclusive have to happen before one could write an article? My journalist friend suggested I write about Madrid. Why would that interest anyone, I asked. It was daily life. He pointed out that it was not everybodys daily life. Martha Gellhorn The Face of War Is it balanced? The sense of the insanity and wickedness of this war grew in me until, for purposes of mental hygiene, I gave up trying to think or judge, and turned myself into a walking tape recorder with eyes. Martha Gellhorn The War in Finland, from The Face of War Is it balanced? Should it be?Again, a single war reporter never gets the whole picture. Gellhorn doesnt pretend to have it. Her reporting is observant, detailed and based on collecting facts, reactions and opinions from a wide number of people. She tells these stories straight they are the facts as she has them. Crucially, she is not omitting details to support a pre-conceived narrative. Balance is not essential but honesty and the quest for the truth are. Martha Gellhorn Though I have long lost the innocent faith that journalism is a guiding light, I still believe it is a lot better than total darkness. Somebody has to bring the news as we cannot all see for ourselves. The Face of War Your writing BalanceThe treatment of a story always depends on its subject As with Cameron, Gellhorn does not intentionally omit or distort information in her stories she presents everything she has If you have access to both sides of a story, you should use them Laziness is not an excuse for writing a story from one side only Your writing Balancebut thats not to say that this style of reporting cannot be useful and valid. E.g. You could follow a pro-life or pro-choice group for a feature on the role of dogma and politics in womens rights campaigning, and justifiably base your whole story on your experience with people on one side. If you did, youd still have to mention the wider debate and be brave enough to ask tough questions of whichever group you are with. Your writing EmbeddingEmbedding doesnt only happen in wars: E.g. Police kettling Climate camp London Riots Natural disasters All stories where it might be difficult to speak to all sides of an event or issue, and where the story might need to focus on the experiences of those around you.