We don't often take any particular stance on stories, prefering to report the facts and let people make up their own minds.
But I'm not ashamed to admit we abandoned that policy in the story about teacher Issabelle DuBois, suspended after losing her patience with a kid dubbed the worst pupil in her school (read the story here .
Is it any wonder our schools have discipline problems when any attempt to control unruly pupils can wreck your career?
7 comments:
Surely, objective reporting of all stories ought to be your aim. Just lay out the facts, and give your readers credit for having the intelligence to make up their own minds.
Then, well-written comment pages can be the forum for debate and opinion.
Your reporter on this story is clearly one of your better operators. But I always feel slightly uneasy when a story is built around the comments of several unnamed sources. Might they have an axe to grind against the people they are criticising? And therefore, should your paper be the willing accomplice to what might be a case of character assassination?
If a source on a story does not want (for whatever, often good, reason) to be named, then your reporters just have to work a bit harder: news agency Bloomberg, in common with many American newspapers, never allow any unattributed quotes in any of their stories.
Closer to home, the BBC insists on at least three sources to support any unattributed allegations it may broadcast or publish (which was why Andrew Gilligan got into trouble).
The mother of this child cuts a very unattractive figure with her look of self-righteous innocence in the photograph that appears to have been set up with your newspaper - suggesting that she may have presented you with the story in the first instance in her attempt to defend the indefensible.
Of course, we, your readers, can work out from straight reporting who really is in the wrong here. We don't need to be led by the nose.
I'd like to think you're right, but looking at some of the comments on the story some people seem to think we're taking the pupil's side anyway.
The story didn't come from the mother - they normally do, but in this case we contacted her after finding out about the teacher's suspension. We have to respect the two teachers' request for anonymity in this instance though.
The BBC don't demand three independent sources - they often take their lead from the news agencies or from one or two sources.
The three source rule went out the window a long time ago (about the time of rolling news...)
The Advertiser needs to do more investigative stories - its what people are really interested in and sells papers.
People love less than obvious gossip.
I think you're right about more investigations - it's something we need to work on. Sadly they've become a bit of a luxury on all local titles - a decade or so ago when I was working in Brighton we had a reporter who would spend months working on investigations, and he produced some fantastic copy - but with the demands of the web it's increasingly difficult to dedicate the resources required.
Sorry, sv, you are wrong about the BBC. If they source information from a news agency, even on rolling news, then they attribute it, by saying someting like "Reuters is reporting..."
When they generate their own stories, though, the BBC - and others - will not carry any sort of serious allegation without at least three sources offering evidence to support the report or charges.
That is not to say that they will necessarily either identify those sources, nor even cite them in the report itself.
Which brings us back to this particular Advertiser report: of course the paper has to respect the wishes of the teachers who spoke to your reporter not to identify them. But then Ian Carter, as editor, could have taken the responsible course of action and chosen therefore not to use the unattributable quotes.
Glad to see a frank admission from a local newspaper editor that you lack the budget for genuine, hard-nosed journalism.
Anonymous, read back - that's not what I said at all. I said I'd like to do more investigations - the kind of stories that mean taking a reporter off-diary for a month. That's not the same as saying we don't do hard-hitting journalism - I think the Advertiser stands up pretty well in this regard compared to other similar-sized publications. But then I would say that.
As for the BBC, you're not quite right there - I spent a fair amount of time working at BBC news online, and the vast majority of the content is pumped in from news agencies around the world, be that PA, AFP, Associated Press, Reuters or small local agencies like Connors in Sussex or INS in Berkshire. There was never any obligation to double or triple source any such material, not to attribute it to the agency in question.
Well here we do have a difference of opinion, Mr Carter.
There is little about the Advertiser which anyone could call "hard-nosed journalism". It is always a little too parish pump and rarely well-handled.
The best - most amusing example - of your odd news values was summed up by a headline which I vaguely remember as being along the lines of "Traffic Chaos after Town Centre Murder".
And I bow to your greater experience of the BBC's burgeoning website, although if you re-read what I wrote, you'll see that I refer to BBC-generated journalism.
The London bombings was a good example: Sky News quickly reported "user-generated" reports without checks being made, and multiplied the number of bombs going off; the BBC waited for official confirmation.
And any BBC journalist working on original reporting still needs at least three sources for serious allegations, something I am familiar with from a 20-year career working at BBC News, Panorama and BBC Sport.
Post a Comment