Is controversy always worth mentioning?

The most recent post from the NPR Ombudsman is a very interesting one.  NPR ran a story about the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts, and failed to mention the controversy surrounding the Boy Scouts and its intolerance to homosexuality on nearly all fronts.  Instead, the NPR piece took a noticeable optimist, almost inspiration angle to the Scouts and, one again, managed to completely underplay the Org's behavior toward gays.

According to the Ombudsman, the NPR story should have mentioned Gays.  I'm incline to agree.  Though I don't think the controversy need be mentioned every time the Scouts are mention in the news, it's clearly important that it be mentioned in a story like the one that ran this weekend, where the article is in tribute of 100 yrs of Boy Scout history.

The problem is a tendency that all journalists have to be just a little bit biased.  As a news writer and new editor on the Tower, I don't only see that tendency in News writers who are afraid of coming down too hard on their interviewees, but I also see it creep up in myself from time to time.  Sometimes, unfortunately, we like the people we're writing stories on, or we like the organization that we're covering.  Sometimes, even though we're reporters, we get caught up in the thrill of, say, the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts or the Beijing Olympics, and forget that it's also our job to tell the other side of the story.

I have a strong feeling that that's probably what happened in the NPR article.  Someone was afraid of saying something offensive, or putting future interviews in jeopardy, and decided to cower away from telling the whole story by ignoring the hard questions. But as a journalist, we really don't have a choice.

The original article can be found here.

Should we use words like "looting?"

NPR's apparently received some complaints about the use of the word "looting" to describe some of the behavior that's gone on in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

I remember complaints about the use of the world "looting" after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.  I can understand why people feel offended by the world, especially given some people's assertion that it's being used in a racist way because mainly black populations are being described.  But as the NPR Ombudsman points out, "looting" is, unfortunately, sometimes part of the story.

"There is nothing pejorative about the word 'loot,' " said Didi Schanche, the foreign editor handling Haiti coverage. "There are indeed people who are taking food and water as and where they can find it as a matter of survival, and we've mentioned them. But there is nothing eleemosynary about guys taking off with three televisions strapped onto the back of a motorcycle. We use 'loot' as it's defined." 

It is important, however, to keep in mind what kinds of words we're using in journalism, though.  Looting, for example, should never be used to describe people who are in a disaster site and desperately searching for food and water. 

What is meant by "The Middle Class"

A couple weeks back, the NPR Ombudsman wrote in her blog about what is meant by the term "Middle Class."   This word's an important one, as it's getting thrown around a lot in current political discourse, especially when people talk about whether a certain policy will "help" or "harm" the middle class.

As the Ombudsman and a Senior Editor at NPR point out, there's really no set definition of the middle class, other than the "average" of what most Americans make (around 42k yearly income).  In short, however, the use of the world "middle class" seems to be an easy way for politicians to appeal to the greatest amount of Americans possible while still sounding like they know what they're talking about.

What I found most interesting, though, was that in Britain politicians might also talk about the "upper class" and the "lower" or "working" class.

In journalism, it seems like the distinction between working class and middle class would be an important one.  Is a janitor, or carpenter, or truck driver who makes just above 30k per year described as "middle class" when a lawyer or tenured professor making up to 90k per year might also be considered "middle class."

That might not be a distinction that politicians in Washington are willing to make-- they'd be painted as Marxists or snooty nobles if they did-- but it's an important for journalists who are supposed to be telling accurate stories.  For example: are middle class voters the same as lower class voters? Upper class voters? Do they vote the same way?  Seems to me that we're missing out a big part of the story by confusing the two.

The NPR Ombudsman

This is my blog following the posts of the NPR Ombudsman.  I noticed as I was looking for editor's blogs that the NPR Ombudsman actually does a better job than most at explaining to the public why the news was presented the way it was.  This is where I will comment on the Ombudsman's comments.

Here's the link to the Ombudsman's blog:
http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/