What’s New About The News?
One of the hazards involved in reporting news is that more and more, people don’t like the news they’re hearing. In our area, there are currently a number of issues that, despite being relayed to our readers as straight as possible, are being reacted to as though the facts are spun like sugar… or a spider’s web, given the nature of the original metaphor.
In Olive, a story arose in recent weeks when it appeared that a registered sex offender had moved into town, directly across from a fairly activist family that called a neighborhood meeting. Unfortunately, it turned out that glitches in the Sex Offender Registry laws are such that while mandating that registered offenders list when they’re moving, and an address they’re planning to move to, the registrants can list anyplace as their destination. As a result, there is an uncomfortable gap between the listing of a new address, and the time when local police check to see if that’s where the registered offender actually showed up. In Olive’s case, this made for uncomfortable news when the owner of the home listed found out he was listed, and his neighbors meeting, only when called for a news story. Granted, he was angry that such a glitch could have occurred.
Worse, neighbors later countered the man’s statements by saying he was lying. Both parties have since come to we in the press asking for both corrections and further reportage. But we have said that the problem they are now wanting us to cover, without involvement of an actual sex offender, and acknowledgement of same by the authorities, has slipped back into being a neighborly dispute – a “he said; she said” fight that is not newsworthy unless both parties are public figures.
And speaking of the latter, we’ve had to tell one of the parties, who is elected to a prominent local board of directors, that while the neighbor gets the benefit of anonymity, she doesn’t. Why? Because of the fact that she holds elected office and is a public figure.
Such are the unwritten laws of the news.
Similarly, in Shandaken, battles have brewed over a lawsuit brought by a number of local landowners over what they are saying are unfair tax assessment policies on the town’s part. The situation, at one point, led to fisticuffs between the town supervisor and a resident. People have asked why we don’t take those suing to task, or try to find out deeper details about the Town Hall fight that occurred last summer. Similarly, they ask why we keep reporting points of contention between the town and its residents, even when its unsure that those residents are a majority of the town?
We can only answer, again, that it is the nature of news reportage to cover points of controversy, especially in politics. And suing governmental entities, or private for that matter, is a basic constitutional right we must respect as part of the equation of a working democracy. Furthermore, although those suing towns shift from private anonymity to the same public figure status as elected officials, fights between the two types of public figure still fall into the “he said.she said” configuration… excepting that elected officials are not expected to hit back. Ever.
Why, then, all the questioning of how news works? Why so much second-guessing?
Part of the problem is that the rise of the public relations industry, first for private business and most recently for political, even governmental entities, has muddied the waters between best-effort factual reporting, on the part of most news entities, and opinionated spinning. Second, the amount of commentary masking as news on our televisions, and blogging on the Internet, has further muddied waters.
As a result, many of the key stories being covered get confused. Such as the “War on Terror” and its connections with Iraq, our world standing, and current partisan political races. Or, on a more local basis, the ongoing environmental review of the long-controversial Belleayre Resort project, which all reviewing and regulating parties are saying still needs court-like adjudication, even though the developer is still insisting his project is still about to get okays. Go figure.
One part of the story is factual, based on actual interviews with key figures. The opther is opinion and spin.
Unfortunately, you, as readers, have to figure out which is which. Because that’s part of Democracy.
PS