One of the things I try to teach my news-writing students at Fanshawe is to avoid presenting a story as good or bad. It just is. It’s up to your listener/viewer to decide whether something is positive or negative. A prime example of this is the state of the Canadian dollar. When it goes up or down it can be good or bad depending on what you want to do with it. If you want to spend money in the U.S., it’s not so good when the value of our dollar falls. If your business relies on selling goods to the States, it’s not so bad.
This came up in a recent discussion about “predatory” credit card companies who set up kiosks on university campuses and sign students up for high-interest cards. There’s more than one way to look at them. A parent I know thinks they’re a great idea because they teach the kids about credit and help them build a credit rating. The sooner they have a rating, the quicker they stop living on their parents’ dime.
One of the best ways for news-writers to avoid taking a side is to avoid using adjectives. Tragic, devastating, horrible – they’re all overused. And have you ever heard a newscaster say, “it’s a parent’s worst nightmare”? When one of my students says that, I drive to the other side of the city and slap them across the face with a wet fish. In my head. It’s one of those phrases that’s not only overused, it’s largely innacurate. You can’t imagine every parent’s worst nightmare and even if you can, you wouldn’t talk about it.
There are so many little decisions that go into creating a newscast but the toughest one for my students to grasp seems to be attribution. A newscaster isn’t supposed to tell you the things that they know for certain. They’re telling you the things that people from organizations they trust are telling you they know for certain. So it’s important to attribute this information to a source. Whether it’s the station’s own reporter or a network journalist or an eyewitness on the scene of an incident, the information came from somewhere. The newscaster needs to share that source if for no other reason than the off chance that it might end up being incorrect. The onus/blame falls off the newscaster and onto the proper source.
I could write about writing news all day! Some tell me I should write a book about it. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just been marking student assignments and I need to go and buy some wet fish.
My uninformed opinion when it comes to attributing a story to the source would be to approach and present your story from the prospective of a 3RD party thus taking you out of the picture. Good thing I’m not in your class, the only time I want to see a fish is after its been cooked.
From what you’ve just written, I think you’d avoid a fish-slapping!
I still hear this and was warned off it in college: don’t write a story that goes, “Gas prices are going to skyrocket in the next six months. That’s according to blah-blah-blah”. You’ve made a definitive statement and THEN attributed it to someone who may or may not know what they’re talking about. Is it wet fish-worthy? How about the cliché “If Kathleen Wynne has her way…” or “If Chief Botten has his way…” – another crutch. Just a few things that come to mind. And, as always, you are RIGHT ON.
Thanks Erin! There are a million of them!