Reporters are Human

I had to really think about how to explain this. It’s not that I can’t, its that having to reveal some of this stuff should be obvious, but isn’t. Basically put, reporters don’t always know what is going on, and have opinions. You would think this would be like saying ducks swim in water, but it really doesn’t work that way. It gets even harder because, that was my job a while back.

To begin, reporters are human. For the most part they went through college to get their job, and are constantly working to be great reporters. This doesn’t stop them from having opinions. There is office politics. When things happen, the reporter doesn’t always know what is going on themselves. Because of the amount of time they have to explain things, we get only a small clip of events. Things like us vs them becomes easy to create.

I was a sports photog for an NBC affiliate for a year. I got the job because I got a certificate from a video production school, and won a few awards during the same time. Even after working at NBC and going back to college, I worked at the school newspaper doing video journalism stuff. This means that I have experience in the field, but was never a high end reporter. Let’s be clear here, I got most of my info simply by watching coworkers, and talking to folks about the NEWS. I was never anything big.

What I found were good people. I am still friends with many of my coworkers even years after moving on. In fact, even some of the rivals are still friends. Once production is over, we would all gather at various places to mingle about the news, and what was going on. There was never an iron door that separated the networks, or the newspapers. In fact, we worked off of each other at times. There might be an insight one reporter found out that will spread to the others. There was still competition, for example, we would never tell each other the score of a game, or what our production is doing.

I only had a certificate for production, which meant that the people around me were better educated than I was. The one guy with the same certificate worked at ABC, and actually went on to get a degree in production. Heck, some of the interns had more training than I did.

In classes, the reporters were told of Walter Cronkite, and other great reporters. They were told about how the NEWS can change the world. It also talked about dealing with ethics, and how productions worked. If something happened to a reporter personally, like getting robbed, or their synogauge was trashed, they couldn’t report on it.

Every morning, the manager would meet with the reporters to discuss what they wanted to report on. There would be a big long list, and then they would sign up for something, or mention something else. The amount of time for each subject was allotted, and when it would air. If something big happened later in the day, a reporter who was finished with their job would take it on. A reporter would film, edit, interview, and script everything on their subject. It would be called a package, and placed into a computer for the next production.

My job was to film sports. By the way, its called shooting, not filming. I know that sounds strange, but remember it is shooting. So, I shot sports. My boss would assign me games, tell me how many shots I needed per game. I edited, scripted, and what the ending score was for my boss, and then be done. This meant that about 20 minutes before production, I was filled with free time. I wrote a book for the heck of it.

Reporting is a weird thing. You have this really intense time, trying to get everything filmed, edited, and sent in, and then downtime. If all of the time is filled for the next show, you have a ton of downtime. If something happened, you would be back at work, running as fast as you could.

During this time, we would banter. So long as everyone was open, there would be a lot of jokes and stories. You could be at work for 12 hours every day, with tons of down time, so coworkers became really close. They would talk about what they saw, and who was interviewed. I have been told that reporters work so hard they do 16-18 hour days. There are times when this happens, and other times when it doesn’t.

This is sort of things sounds pretty human right? Thats because most reporters are in fact human. I watched a coworker go from single, dating, engaged, and then married while I was working with him. Heck, he asked her at a game I was shooting, and I didn’t get the moment. Still feel awful about that.

The reason why you never see this, is because on camera, the reporter is someone else. Their job is to report the news, not give you their personal opinions on which soda is better. The job is to tell you what happened, and let you decide on the rest. A personal opinion has to be nipped in the bud before production time.

To give you an idea, a big political convention happened and someone went out to shoot it. After 3-4 hours of being there, he went back. People yelled at him for not staying the entire time, but really, he only had 30 seconds to fill. The majority of the show was people standing around, giving speeches, or cheering. It was fairly boring.

What was shown looked like a big event, with people cheering, and passionate speeches. The reason why is where we start to see personal opinion go in.

To explain all of this, let me explain my easy job at NBC. I shot sports, this meant that for every game, I had to get major scores. For every game, there had to be several shots of gameplay. I would be there for half the game, hand over a card to someone so I could find out the final score, and then head out to the next game.

Sports reporting is incredibly pure in my opinion. I can tell you exactly who did what, and how for the entire game. Not only that, I can show footage of the event, so you can agree. The problem is that no one wants to watch the entire game. Not only that, they only want to watch their own team being amazing. So, I would choose out great shots from the game for what is considered the home team, and have that as the package. The highlight reel is not what actually happened.

It could get really odd at times. The score would be 115 to 23, but I had to show all 23 points since that was the home team. I would get the best angles I could, and show how amazing this team was. I reported the final score, but did not show how the game was played.

Within reporting, this is known as localising. A terror plot blows up busses in London, and the local TV station on the other side of the world tries to localise it. They interview people that are from the town, and have been to the place. There are interviews with city officials on how they would respond to such an event. Although it happened in England, this other town thousands of miles away tries to make it sound like it could happen in their own backyard.

It gets even weirder when there is no real home team. The reporter will try to show what they believe the audience wants to see. If the reporter believes that it needs to be seen from a certain angle, to get all of the information, they will do that. A war in a far away country is difficult to show, because everyone involved does not look like a local person. So the reporter shows mothers with children, men with guns, and explosions. The localization is from recognizing the experience itself.

Trying to show the entirety of an event is impossible because of time restraints. I think the most I ever had was a minute. For the most part, I had 15- 20 second highlight reels of games. So the entire game was 1-0, I show that score, and some fancy footwork. The rest of the 90 minutes are not shown. You see the important part -the score- and thats it. If you were to go to the game personally, you may feel just as bored as my coworker at the political convention.

You see the protest in Ferguson Missouri, and it looks intense. You see cars set on fire. You see police lining up to stop protesters. You see a ton, and yet nothing. What you saw was the highlight reel of the event. Really, most protest rallies are boring. What you saw was not what happened. The need to keep things to a small amount of time means showing only the really big things quickly, and then move onto something else.

There is a few ways I could screw up my highlight reel. I could report the wrong person doing something, or give the wrong score. Both of these go back to interesting realities within sports. The first is that rosters change, and the second is that even though the score is on a wall, someone can lie, or not even report it in.

Officially speaking, only a coach could call in the score. So, if I handed over a card to someone with a sports jacket, or who worked at the school they would refuse. Not a joke. What happens if the team loses? Or has all this other work and the coach forgets? Officially speaking, I would have to wait for the coach to call. We had a deadline, and coaches wouldn’t call until way after. So, I had to rely on other sources to find out the score. I had a list of people to call, both official and fan, who would tell me. The reason why this gets so difficult, is because I couldn’t be at every event all the time.

At the Ferguson protests, police began to fire teargas at protesters. A little while later, people hid in a store to escape the smoke. People on the ground shot it with their phones. The police reported that they fired tear gas at protesters breaking into the store. They weren’t lying technically, but in reality, it sounded like they were acting at the movements of the protesters instead of the other way around.

Thats the trick, reporters are human. They have so much time to report, and about 20 seconds to explain the entire thing. If someone lies, changes details, or doesn’t report something the reporter won’t know. As things progress in an event, it is common to never fully know what happened. No one is wearing jerseys, no one is keeping score, and there is no playing field.

This is a common scenario. A call about a shooting goes out on the police blotter. The NEWS reporter races over to the scene, and misses most of the action. She interviews the police, and they give one story. Then she interviews the neighbors, and they give another. This has to be done in a 30 second package, that can be easily understood by anyone watching. Who is the local in this story? Who scored? Who won? What really happened? The answer has to come from the reporter, and talked about as if everything is known.

In recent news, we have seen some reporters reveal their own opinions. Joe Scarbourough said that the protests in Ferguson should be stopped, and forgotten.

"You know what pisses me off too is I have people around this set all the time. They let me say what I say on set and they sit and stare at me, slack-jawed," he said. "They're afraid to say anything on the air, even though they know it's BS. People [are] saying one thing when the camera's on and then saying something completely different when the camera gets turned off, because they're somehow afraid they'll be called racist if they tell the truth."

Scarborough went on to preemptively dismiss any criticism he receives on the subject.

"If I've offended anybody offended anybody by saying what I've said, trust me, 95% of America thinks just like me. Just because there are cowards that won't say that on TV — that's your problem, it's not mine," he said.

Keep in mind what you are reading. A reporter is giving his own opinion. He personally views what is happening in one way, however, he reports it differently based on what he thinks the audience wants. He honestly believes that 95% of the country view it just like him. The difference between his opinion, and what he believes he should report are both based in misinformation. As said earlier, the police have been using this to their advantage, and it shows.

In another case, Chris Rock, a great comedian, has talked about what he personally believes. I tried finding a good quote that summed everything up, but dang it the entire thing is good. Once again, Rock is basing everything off of the information he has been given. Even if you were to show him that Michael Moore staged everything, and hired actors, it wouldn’t be believed. Rock believes Moore is part of the home team.

As you can see, people like reporters are human. They can be tricked, persuaded, and even hold grudges. The trick for them is trying to report the NEWS to what is considered the home team. It may not be the team the reporter personally is in. For example, I knew plenty of republicans at stations, they reported it differently though.

But why are they doing this? To fully understand the idea we have to go into philosophy and the idea of the thesis and the antithesis. Within Western understanding, we believe there must be two sides, and that these two sides are opposite of each other. The truth is nothing like that, but this is what we believe. Expect to learn more about that in the next article.

While waiting for that, also look forward to videos and info about the IAAPA, which happened a few weeks back. There were a ton of new arcade games shown, and enthusiasts have been getting videos and pictures of it all. Until then, go play some games.