All direct quotations should be clear, concise, relevant and effective. “The problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications,” she wrote on her blog, adding: “NPR’s job is to give listeners all perspectives, and present the news as detailed as possible and put it in context.” Because using the word torture would amount to taking sides, reporters should instead “describe the techniques and skip the characterization” entirely, she said. If you think they do, you might be surprised. In 2009 and 2010, The New York Times wrote about the 50 words most frequently looked up by its readers. How about a complex event or situation that requires the reporter to make a series of judgments in order to describe adequately and assign priorities to such factors as motivation, relationships among actors, or likely consequences. THE SKILLS we need as citizen journalists depends on the type of journalism we plan to engage in. From archives: “She identified herself as a reporter. ... We’ve seen journalism students look up a word in a thesaurus, and then use the most impressive synonym, or so it seems. Another said he had been referred to Rivkin by a conservative think tank. Poynter came up with a list in 2014 of some words that readers might not understand, including “lambaste,” “tout,” “salvo,” and “opine.” (It’s a sign of how quickly things change that many of the links in that article and the Storify of tweets about the subject are now dead.). Linda Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the United States Supreme Court, is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. If you provide enough context that the reader can understand the fancy word, they will stay with you. I’m taking a pass on the toughest calls I face. When another judge ruled that some prisoners held by the United States at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan had the right to petition for habeas corpus, Rivkin “warned that the ruling ‘gravely undermined’ the country’s ‘ability to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities worldwide. ), “He reached out,” one told me, noting that “I’ve known him a long time.”. NPR has chosen to use “harsh interrogation tactics” or “enhanced interrogation techniques” instead of “torture” when reporting stories about waterboarding and other coercive practices used to interrogate terrorism suspects. ... She said another friend had noticed the same thing. But Brent Cunningham, deputy editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, has observed that despite this discontent and self-reflection, “nothing replaced objectivity as journalism’s dominant professional norm.” In fact, he notes, “a cottage industry of bias police has sprung up,” leading to “hypersensitivity among the press to charges of bias,” which in turn reinforces the problematic adherence to a standard of “objectivity” that “can trip us up on the way to ‘truth. Attribution that appears in the middle of a sentence should come at a natural break rather than interrupt a thought. Commas go inside the closing quote mark when you are providing attribution. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not policy and it’s pretty clear that these things are prosecuted,” Rivkin is quoted as saying. He then walked behind her and punched her in the side of the head”. Embrace the virtual world. I’m not picking on the Times—the newspaper I read most carefully as well as the place I worked for 40 years. Attribute all second-hand information, criticisms, statements about controversial issues, opinions, and all direct and indirect quotations. Simply reporting the words without context is irresponsible journalism at its worst. Copyright Info. My family doesn't have that much time." Help advance the Nieman Foundation’s mission “to promote and elevate the standards of journalism” by making a donation. To report, without elaboration, a politician’s charge concerning the “death panels” in the health care bill is—assuming the politician is quoted accurately—certainly to report the truth. It's like Christmas came early," said Jamie Houston, Vice President of Marketing for Nordstorm. Well, for one thing, the notion that there exists one Truth exists in some tension with core First Amendment values. The “other side” is contained in the briefs presenting the argument that the judge rejected. This debate comes up most often during political campaigns, and many press critics and commentators have pointed out how superficial and subject to manipulation that format can be in the context of a campaign. said. Many journalists are “sesquipedalians,” and unapologetic at that. But I’m also seeking refuge. Does such a report convey a more useful or meaningful truth, the contextual truth of the situation? One can be a “sesquipedalian”—someone who loves to use long words—and still serve the readers. Quotes and Attribution How about truth for a goal? “For journalism, these tests roughly translate into getting the facts straight and making sense of the facts.” They call for a “journalism of verification” to replace a “journalism of assertion”: “A more conscious discipline of verification is the best antidote to being overrun by a new journalism of assertion.”. For instance, some people—many people—consider waterboarding to be torture, and they refer to it that way. Templeton fights against that ‘generally used synonym” but he begins by excluding elements that might bugger his analysis. He worked in the Office of Policy Development in the Justice Department and worked for Vice President Bush as legal adviser to the counsel to the vicepresident, later becoming special assistant for domestic policy to Vice President Dan Quayle and associate general counsel in the Department of Energy. Writing and photography are the basic skills of citizen journalism. Fairness and objectivity should be regarded as tools to that end, they maintain, rather than as ends in themselves. 2. I asked reporters who had quoted him whether they had called him for a quote or whether he had called them. Never mind such practices are common place; the trust placed in your profession by the society you serve demands better. A Washington Post analysis of the release of the so-called torture memos included this paragraph: “David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer at Baker Hostetler who supported the detainee policies, says the memos’ ‘careful and nuanced legal analysis’ … produced ’eminently reasonable results.’ ” I give the Post writer credit for identifying Rivkin as a lawyer in private practice who simply supports one side of the issue. For example, in August 2006, when a federal district judge in Detroit declared that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional, Rivkin had this to say in the Times: “It is an appallingly bad opinion, bad from both a philosophical and technical perspective, manifesting strong bias.” Rivkin was identified as “an official in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush.”. '”, Truth. My family doesn't have that much time.". For a one-paragraph quotation that includes two or more sentences, place the quotation marks only at the beginning and end of the entire quotation, not at the beginning and end of each sentence. (I omit the names of the reporters because they did not expect to be identified in an article. In other words, I was right to say that ‘race’ could be, and has been, substituted with ‘sub-species’ in classifying populations. As a surrogate, a “go-to proxy,” he is simply filling a role assigned to him by reporters and—let’s assume—editors who accept unquestionably the notion that every story has another side that it is journalism’s duty to present. Obviously not. What was the purpose of that distancing phrase? What is a news organization to do? I probably don’t have to tell you what I think of this kind of “reporting.” I find it particularly troubling to use Rivkin to criticize federal court decisions. To the extent that Rivkin has any relevant expertise, the basis for it is not disclosed on his law firm’s website, which contains a lengthy biography. This is what... Trump sparks debate with usage of the word ‘pour’, the 50 words most frequently looked up by its readers, “She identified herself as a reporter. Ideally, news articles (as opposed to opinion pieces or editorials) are about relaying facts and faithful depictions of events to the readers. The more I read, the more mystified I became. Quotes are the muscle of a story. Put a comma after attribution introducing a one-sentence quotation and a colon after attribution introducing two or more sentences of quotation. “I have quoted him a few times in the weird role of surrogate for the Bush administration. She said another friend had noticed the same thing. That phrase “with a reputation” put the reporter, and the newspaper, at arm’s length from the fact that the Fox News Channel does have a conservative point of view, and proudly so. Does your audience? (printable version here). When questioned, students have replied that they wanted to “sound smart. Loaded Words. "They said training could take up to six months. Again, that may be an easy example, because it’s binary—use the word torture, or avoid it. ", RIGHT: "For years it's been profitable being a mechanic in this city," Logan Greene said. In this article, I will raise some questions about the assumption behind that credo, as well as the utility, in this media-saturated and cynical age, of the siren call of “fairness and objectivity.”. They foment the impression that eschewing bloviation is for dotards. Exception: When attributing a long title to a source, the order is reversed. The line might read, "Madison called Monroe a "filthy lint licker" before she threw an antique vase valued over $5,000 to the floor." Write, for example, that “the politician’s face turned red as he bloviated for five minutes about why the bill should not be passed.” Even if your readers don’t learn exactly what “bloviated” means, they will have a good idea.
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