Journalism... as a profession.
Our last class discussion talked about just that... journalism as a profession. The Mind of a Journalist, compared journalism to a professional priesthood. Now... upon hearing this, one may think this could be borderline sacrilegious and I'm still not sold on the comparison, but we talked about it in class and that helped me to see where they were going with it.
Dictionary.com says priesthood is:
priest·hood
(prēst'hŏŏd')  n.
|
In the Church as well as in many if not every religion, the aspect of faith is involved. President Eyring discusses how important faith is when dealing with the priesthood in his talk in Spring 2008 General Conference. So we know that faith is required to see miracles, we have to have faith in others, in our leaders (especially our priesthood leaders) that they are truly inspired and are leading us down the correct path. I think this is where the comparison comes in. The class talked about how faith is required in reporting. The audience has to believe that we (the journalists) are in fact telling the truth. So, we have the responsibility to make sure we have all the facts, and get the story to them. I agree with it in that sense of the journalist having the responsibility of telling the truth and creating that trust and faith in the audience.
Journalists are unique in that they see the world through different eyes. As an intern I get the privilege of shadowing several reporters and they have many things in common. 1. A desire to make a difference in the world. 2. curiosity. 3. confidence and 4. a sense of major skepticism. Journalist question everything they see... they don't just take it for face-value. This of course can generate some great stories. This is still an attribute that I'm working on. A lot of times I hear something and just believe it right away (this is also not a bad thing... until you get taken advantage of). I like to think of journalists as that watchdog... protecting those whom they serve. When they are always questioning things... answers get unearthed, problems can be resolved... and people can be protected against corruption or being taken advantage of. For example, there is an interesting article from poynter.org and it talks about a former investigative reporter named John Dougherty. He is now running for Senate in Arizona. He visions putting a bunch of investigative reporters on his staff in order to root out corruption and scandals. Journalist's unique ability to question and dig deeper goes beyond what most people would do on a daily bases.
So there's been an interesting question that I have been struggling with lately. So much that I'm not even sure reporting is the path for me. The question was, "How close do you get to your story and how far away do you stay?" I have a hard time not letting stories get too personal. One day I was shadowing Noah Bond on a tragic story about a father who was shot to death in a drive-by shooting. Later that day we were interviewing the brother-in-law and I played with the kids. I just kept thinking... these little boys have no idea that their dad was killed! I really had a hard time holding back the tears... but as I was talking to Noah and the photographer about it they both said they are just used to doing stories like this. They hold the balance of not getting too involved, but also getting enough to tell a great story. I guess it's something that just comes with experience?
*** Interesting article about the future of journalism....http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=186467
No comments:
Post a Comment