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Rob Stafford '81, correspondent
for NBC News "Dateline":
The media are too diverse and too big to assess with one statement.
You have cable, Internet, Al-Jazeera, etc. Media don't work together.
I have never seen a reporter I've worked with fabricate a story.
As a reporter you have to remind yourself that it's better to be
dull and right than wrong and riveting.
In local news, in particular, where you don't always have the
wide range of great stories to choose from that we do at "Dateline,"
some reporters have to fight the urge to make the story sound more
exciting than it really is. You have to check your adjectives to
see if you are overstating. Was the loud bang really more of a dull
thud? A little exaggeration here and there can grow into a bad habit
and into bigger, more serious problems later on in a reporter's
career.
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'Credibility is all we have as journalists.
Lose that and we're cooked.'
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George Moses, my journalism professor at Macalester, was a stickler
for absolute accuracy. He held a mock news conference in one class
and if memory serves me correctly he played the role of Sheriff
Jon Smyth conducting an investigation. I took his quotes but never
asked for the spelling of the name and, of course, wrote it the
way it sounded--John Smith. Lesson learned. For 22 years I've always
asked for the spelling of both the first and last name because of
that experience.
"Dateline" came back from some real problems years ago
with a system of checks and balances that work. Every story that
I've ever done for the last eight years goes through two screenings:
editorial and legal/standards. You sit in a room with an executive
producer and five senior producers, your producer and you. You focus
on storytelling. You make changes. You sit down with the standards
person who looks at the piece for fairness. You have to challenge
the premise of the story--something George Moses taught at Macalester--as
well as trying to prove it. At the same time, you have to have other
points of view. "Fair and balanced"--what does it mean?
It doesn't mean side "a" gets 30 seconds and side "b"
gets 30. It means a reporter has to challenge each side equally.
Credibility is all we have as journalists. Lose that and we're
cooked. I think our low poll numbers are due in part to the fact
the country is very polarized politically and some viewers feel
any story that doesn't reinforce their viewpoint is biased.
It's essential that newsrooms guard against groupthink; that the
organization assembles a team of strong editors with diverse backgrounds
(politically, ethnically, racially) to comb through stories looking
for inadvertent bias or to raise opposing views the reporter didn't
consider because of his personal background and beliefs.
I do think viewers are very savvy and sophisticated. I'm always
thinking, "What do they want to ask this person?" No matter
how difficult it is, you have to ask the challenging question. If
you don't ask it, viewers will walk away from the story not getting
what they wanted.
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