Week 6 - Truth & Objectivity

I think the general skepticism towards the ethics of journalists exemplifies the awkward responsibility journalists have towards truth. A journo I really admire, Laurie Oakes, wrote the following:

"Politicians and political journalists are two forms of parasite living on each other: they're mutually dependent.”

I think Tickle really could have tackled this angle, the journalist-source relationship opens up so many practical examples of what responsibility journalists have to truth (i.e. the recent controversy surrounding the infamous Costello dinner with 3 journos). Instead Tickle gets bogged down in trying, first, to give a short history of western approaches to truth throughout history, (namedropping countless prominent thinkers whose significance is only matched in their insignificance to the contemporary journalist) and secondly, in presenting an unusual argument on postmodernism and its incompatibility with journalism.

Laurie Oakes goes on to quote a speech he gave to a Liberal party function not long after the cons won office in 1996:

"Politicians and the journalists who report on politics occupy the same building, have a fair bit of contact, are obsessed by many of the same things, but they regard each other as two quite different species.

"Basically you've got to get to know the people in the Press Gallery, work out who's likely to treat you fairly.

"And always — ALWAYS — in your dealings with them you've got to spell out the ground rules. Make very specific whether you are saying something for attribution, simply as background, or not for use at all.

"Never ASSUME the ground rules. Some promising political careers have been wrecked by people assuming they would not be quoted."

I found Laurie’s comments very insightful, but to be honest I was a little disappointed in how contrived the whole process of political reporting can be.

I must commend Tickle though for her exist strategy. After spending so long on abstract arguments, attempting to condense the entire western history, and running up some unusual lines of thought, her conclusion was as self-evident as it was dismissive of any further discussion: ‘journalistic record serves as a store of instant, if imperfect history that constitutes a crucial element in public and national life.’ Hahahaha Great conclusion.

Week 5 Journalism-trade craft or profesion

I found the Wapping incident (and some of the detail about it found in the Hirst reading) really fascinating. I think Hirst’s comparison of the transition from typewriters to computers as akin to setting up a production-line for journalists, and creating a ‘weird and dispiriting place’ as just a tad fanciful. Hirst appears to indulge in a sentimentality towards typewriters and old printing methods that someone who has grown up with computers, such as myself, finds hard to understand. In particular the Engel quote of a lack of ‘happy chaos in the newspaper office’ at Wapping makes me cringe – as though the change in technology itself is responsible for the lack of quality discussion in the office. Perhaps he mistook the clatter of typewriters for constructive chatter in the workplace. If Hirst had presented this ‘new’ clinical environment in Wapping as symbolic of a deterioration in journalistic standards then that would be much more convincing.