THIS PAST week, The Cavalier Daily again offered a diverse set of issues for commentary. It is rare that a single issue triggers enough commentary to fill a column, but that was the case this week. I won't get past Monday's issue, which gave ample food for thought.
Good Photojournalism
The week started off with a bang with Dan Lopez's front-page photo of those arrested at the Persian Gulf policy conference. A floor's-eye view of one arrested person's face, others bound and prone behind him, with a group of police officers standing casually behind them - it was an unusual photo that caught the eye. It was an excellent example of how photojournalism makes a statement.
The identified arrested person clearly cooperated (in the most basic sense, not in a "staging" sense) with having his face appear in the paper, otherwise he could have simply turned his head. Likewise, the police, who could have moved out of the frame, cooperated in the same sense.
But what does the photo say? While opinions can always differ, I found the photo had a protester-friendly flavor. It portrays the clean-cut and close-shaven young man, prone and hog-tied with his companions, while police casually mill in the background, unaffected and unconcerned, and not keeping close watch. No one seems to be struggling or resisting. The photo served to amplify the sympathetic tone of the accompanying article, which focused primarily on the actions of the protesters and their opinions. An interesting choice by the editors, and a clear statement.
Is there an ethical problem here? Is this front-page editorializing in the guise of news reporting? I suspect not. Some stories are inherently hard to cover, and even-handed treatment means readers will add their own interpretation or spin. Here, the hard-line reaction not to simply remove the protestors, but also to arrest them, speaks for itself. The coverage, while protestor-friendly, was not anti-police, nor did it attack Howell or the conference organizers. It clearly chronicled the efforts of the protestors to disrupt the conference and prevent Howell from speaking. In total, it was a nicely done, thought-provoking piece, fueled by a well-composed and interesting picture.
Poor Reporting
Also appearing on the front page was the story "Council, Honor, UJC candidates offer views," which was on the debates by Student Council, Honor Committee, and Judiciary candidates. It was a poorly reported piece with little substantive information for readers, and which violated some basic tenets of political reporting.
A basic tenet of covering political debates is that you cover everyone's position. Sometimes referred to as the "equal time" proposition, the underlying concept is that the newspaper doesn't want to serve the interests of one candidate over any of the others. So if you explicate one candidate's position on a topic, you explicate all the candidate's positions. In doing so, you hope to balance the role of the paper in informing the public, favoring no one candidate over any other. The writer's reporting on the Council president's debate violated this principle left, right and center, quoting two candidates, stating the position of one, and merely mentioning the names of the other three candidates in the race.
In addition, what coverage there was of the Council presidential candidates' positions was surface and devoid of context. Nick Jabbour was quoted as saying the University needs a new "academic culture." No context or explication is provided by the reporter, so the quote ends up as a meaningless catch-phrase. Even if Mr. Jabbour failed to expand on his statement, surely that would bear comment. Context is what helps readers understand the importance of the story covered - it is also the primary difference between good newspaper reporting and the sound-bite driven informational wasteland of TV news coverage.
Similarly, surface treatment characterizes the reporting on the topics of the debate. We are told, for example, that "[m]any candidates emphasized increasing student involvement in Council affairs." How many? All? If not, which ones? In this type of reporting, details matter. Without detailed coverage, there is no point to the story.
Particularly painful was the long laundry list of candidates at the end who "also participated in the debate." Presumably, based on the paragraph that preceded the list, these were candidates for the Judiciary Committee. It is impossible to tell, unfortunately, because there is no identifying information in the one-sentence paragraph, nor is the sentence structured as a transition from the previous paragraph. Transitions, in general, were a problem in this piece. Perhaps headers ("Student Council President," "Honor Committee," etc.), which are acceptable style for news writing, would have helped.
The construction of the piece, and its lack of detail and substance, produced a piece of writing far below what I have come to expect from The Cavalier Daily, and from the reporter. In recent memory, this reporter has produced excellent work on the QualChoice contraception plan and on the Napster trial, so I have no doubt of her ability to cover a story well. The editors of this piece share a substantial part of the blame in either not assisting her in shaping an acceptable piece, or in so limiting the amount of space in which her piece ran so as to make it impossible for her to do her job well.
(Brent Garland can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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