Less a team than a mob, and we're all at least partly to blame
Former journalist Bob Bergen writes a long-overdue article in J-Source - an internal industry publication for Canadian journalism - about how the Canadian Forces are covered by his colleagues still in the business:
Reading that, I can't help thinking that if Canadian news organizations covered the CF properly, there would be no need for The Torch, and I could go back to having a lot more free hours in my week. Faster, please!
While that's not going to happen, there are a couple of solutions to the main problems laid out in Bergen's article, namely: the inability to cooperate in order to share experience and minimize reinventing the wheel with each new reporter on a military story, and the dearth of expertise and continuity in military reporting in this country.
It's a damned shame that competition among journalists often overrides their sense of decency and perspective - hell, their sense of self-preservation - as far as sharing information is concerned. Soldiers compete too, all the time: for plum postings, for decent positions, and of course for promotions in a ruthlessly pyramidal hierarchy. When I first joined the military more than twenty years ago (geez, was it that long ago?), I was asked by a friend from high school how I could give up my individuality. I replied that I didn't: the CF wanted me specifically because of all my individual talents. The big difference between individuality in civilian and military life, I told my buddy, was that in the military, your individual talents are harnessed to a communal goal, not just a personal one. Soldiers compete, but they never lose sight of the fact that they're all supposed to be pulling in the same direction.
Most journalists would argue that they can't follow that model, and that it wouldn't even be healthy for the Canadian public to have them thinking of themselves as a team. Where would we get the divergence of opinions, the balance of different approaches and points of view on a given story? I'd argue that, as the title of this post suggests, there's already some groupthink in the mainstream media, as there is in just about every other walk of life. In fact, it's more pronounced among journalists than other lines of work, since as a story gains momentum, every other media outlet feels it has to jump on board so as not to be left behind. How many journalists really wanted to cover the never-ending, 24/7 Michael Jackson eulogy cum retrospective? And yet they did. They just did it as a mob rather than as a team.
The easiest fix for this problem is to formalize the training process within each news organization. Each reporter/editor/producer lays out in writing how they prepared (courses, reading lists, people to talk to, etc), what was most useful, and what they found out when they got on to the ground with the soldiers. Then, instead of having reporters pass each other on the tarmac - one going in and the other going out - have a day or two handover period. Even more productive would be for each news organization to contribute to a pooled resource base, but that's likely a pipe dream.
This isn't rocket science, though: Bergen's already laid out how the military outmatches the media in terms of training and preparation, so why not follow that blueprint for success?
The second problem - that of continuity and expertise in military reporting - is tougher to tackle. The biggest issue, as I see it, is that not enough news consumers care enough about military issues for the media to devote the significant resources it would take to cover the CF properly. Oh, there are peripheral issues, like the general bias of reporters towards suspicion of authority, the difficulty of penetrating what is a very technical and insular culture, etc. But those could be overcome with enough motivation to do so. Just look at hockey coverage: millions of dollars spent, significant amounts of expertise, focus and continuity, and generally good coverage as a result.
They know how to do a good job of it, they just don't have much reason to.
And that's really a crying shame, because the single biggest line item in the budget of this country is the military. The Department of National Defence employs over 100,000 Canadians in one capacity or another. It should be a big enough deal to devote a reporter or two full time to cover this beat. But it's not. And so we get a parade of individuals, some more diligent in getting up to speed than others, who write a bit, or talk a bit into the camera about the CF, and then move on to other points of interest to their audience.
This is the underlying issue with all military matters in Canada - political, funding, journalistic, the whole ball of wax: if ordinary Canadians cared more about it - cared enough to vote one way or another in the next election on it, cared enough to write in and complain about shoddy coverage, to cancel their subscription or change the channel over it - the politicians and journalists would quickly take note and change their behaviour accordingly.
At the end of the day, the Canadian Forces gets the attention and resources that we, the Canadian people, demand for it. So while the Canadian media needs to take a long-overdue look in the mirror over how they cover the CF, the Canadian public should do a bit of soul-searching too.
Update: Perhaps the media are more tightly-knit than anyone suspected. Or perhaps Garth Pritchard is simply one of the ones who gets it:
...there are serious shortcomings in the way the news media covers the Canadian Forces.
More than 130 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan and untold numbers have been wounded. But the vast majority who return to Canada stay in the Forces and systematically train the next groups to be deployed.
At the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre at CFB Wainwright, Alberta, they even learn how to deal with embedded journalists like Lang, hostile local Afghan journalists or indifferent international journalists from other countries.
Therein lies the difference between the Canadian Forces and Canadian journalists: The playing field is not level. It is not even close
The Canadian military has highly trained personnel in public affairs, communications planning, media relations and news management who design programs and exercises to teach other soldiers how to deal with the media.
Unlike, the military, journalists are not a team. They are competitors. They do not share their expertise. They are like cats.
Although she was a National Newspaper Award-winning health reporter, when Lang showed up in Kandahar the military already knew how to deal with her and the countless others like her who are learning on the job from scratch.
Then tragedy struck when Lang courageously put her life on the line to do what she did best – write the stories of others. She did not make it back and could not share with others what she learned there.
Hundreds of other journalists just like Lang, however, have made it back after their six-week stint and their military stories end there.
They have been there and they have done that and they go back to covering court, health, provincial politics, city hall, police, environment, women’s issues and myriad other assignments or beats their news outlets give them.
Unlike the Canadian Forces, they do not systematically train the next cohort.
Moreover, they do not continue to cover the Canadian Forces on a beat over time. [Babbler's emphasis]
Reading that, I can't help thinking that if Canadian news organizations covered the CF properly, there would be no need for The Torch, and I could go back to having a lot more free hours in my week. Faster, please!
While that's not going to happen, there are a couple of solutions to the main problems laid out in Bergen's article, namely: the inability to cooperate in order to share experience and minimize reinventing the wheel with each new reporter on a military story, and the dearth of expertise and continuity in military reporting in this country.
It's a damned shame that competition among journalists often overrides their sense of decency and perspective - hell, their sense of self-preservation - as far as sharing information is concerned. Soldiers compete too, all the time: for plum postings, for decent positions, and of course for promotions in a ruthlessly pyramidal hierarchy. When I first joined the military more than twenty years ago (geez, was it that long ago?), I was asked by a friend from high school how I could give up my individuality. I replied that I didn't: the CF wanted me specifically because of all my individual talents. The big difference between individuality in civilian and military life, I told my buddy, was that in the military, your individual talents are harnessed to a communal goal, not just a personal one. Soldiers compete, but they never lose sight of the fact that they're all supposed to be pulling in the same direction.
Most journalists would argue that they can't follow that model, and that it wouldn't even be healthy for the Canadian public to have them thinking of themselves as a team. Where would we get the divergence of opinions, the balance of different approaches and points of view on a given story? I'd argue that, as the title of this post suggests, there's already some groupthink in the mainstream media, as there is in just about every other walk of life. In fact, it's more pronounced among journalists than other lines of work, since as a story gains momentum, every other media outlet feels it has to jump on board so as not to be left behind. How many journalists really wanted to cover the never-ending, 24/7 Michael Jackson eulogy cum retrospective? And yet they did. They just did it as a mob rather than as a team.
The easiest fix for this problem is to formalize the training process within each news organization. Each reporter/editor/producer lays out in writing how they prepared (courses, reading lists, people to talk to, etc), what was most useful, and what they found out when they got on to the ground with the soldiers. Then, instead of having reporters pass each other on the tarmac - one going in and the other going out - have a day or two handover period. Even more productive would be for each news organization to contribute to a pooled resource base, but that's likely a pipe dream.
This isn't rocket science, though: Bergen's already laid out how the military outmatches the media in terms of training and preparation, so why not follow that blueprint for success?
The second problem - that of continuity and expertise in military reporting - is tougher to tackle. The biggest issue, as I see it, is that not enough news consumers care enough about military issues for the media to devote the significant resources it would take to cover the CF properly. Oh, there are peripheral issues, like the general bias of reporters towards suspicion of authority, the difficulty of penetrating what is a very technical and insular culture, etc. But those could be overcome with enough motivation to do so. Just look at hockey coverage: millions of dollars spent, significant amounts of expertise, focus and continuity, and generally good coverage as a result.
They know how to do a good job of it, they just don't have much reason to.
And that's really a crying shame, because the single biggest line item in the budget of this country is the military. The Department of National Defence employs over 100,000 Canadians in one capacity or another. It should be a big enough deal to devote a reporter or two full time to cover this beat. But it's not. And so we get a parade of individuals, some more diligent in getting up to speed than others, who write a bit, or talk a bit into the camera about the CF, and then move on to other points of interest to their audience.
This is the underlying issue with all military matters in Canada - political, funding, journalistic, the whole ball of wax: if ordinary Canadians cared more about it - cared enough to vote one way or another in the next election on it, cared enough to write in and complain about shoddy coverage, to cancel their subscription or change the channel over it - the politicians and journalists would quickly take note and change their behaviour accordingly.
At the end of the day, the Canadian Forces gets the attention and resources that we, the Canadian people, demand for it. So while the Canadian media needs to take a long-overdue look in the mirror over how they cover the CF, the Canadian public should do a bit of soul-searching too.
Update: Perhaps the media are more tightly-knit than anyone suspected. Or perhaps Garth Pritchard is simply one of the ones who gets it:
Soldiers do not ordinarily like to salute civilians. At a solemn ramp ceremony Saturday at Kandahar Airfield, 4,000 soldiers saluted as five coffins were carried onboard an airplane that was to fly them home to Canada. And for the first time in this war, one of those caskets -- the lead one -- held the remains of a Canadian war correspondent, Michelle Lang.
...
The journalistic rules of the day [2002 - before the embed program] were that if you travelled or stayed with the Canadian military, you were somehow tainted. The major networks insisted that their journalists travel independently, with fixers and their own vehicles. That way, in their minds, the truth could be told. As well, the few small newspapers and independents who didn't ask permission and went to cover the story were held at bay: It was easy to accuse these independents of producing propaganda -- since they'd been travelling with and living with the military, their stories would be biased in favour of the military.
It was quite obvious that there was no trust. The media certainly did not trust the military and the feeling was mutual.
The outcome was that Canadians had no idea what was happening.
...
Our tribe -- Canadian journalists -- felt for the first time in this nightmare war, the loss of one of our own. We now know, intimately, the hurt, the indescribable emptiness, the profound grief -- something that Canadian soldiers and their families have had to deal with 138 times since 2002. We the media truly understand now.
We now all better understand the pain our soldiers feel when they lose one of their tribe -- their brother or sister in arms. And then the next day they have to don their body armour and head out on perhaps the same patrol. We find writing and editing difficult -- almost impossible. How much harder it must be for them.
We have come full circle. The distrust is gone, replaced by respect that goes both ways.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 3:30 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home