When I was in college, I told someone I was taking a pre-journalism class. "Really?" she replied. "When you write an article, even if it's not for publication, how do you manage to keep your opinion out of it? If I were a journalist, I'd have to fight that temptation. I have my strong opinions." Her question surprised me. "Unless you're writing an editorial, a column, or a review, the job (or the assignment) is to report the facts without editorializing. That's the mindset a reporter has to have," I told her. I remember how easy it was to tell her this when I was speaking in abstract terms, without any specific news event in mind. Last night, however, after the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris...
...Well, let's just say I was inclined to take the approach Nick Hornby's character, JJ, in A Long Way Down thought he would use if he were a journalist. JJ was certain that if he reported such an attack on the air, it would be laced with obvious anger and profanity. It's difficult to blame him. It takes immense tongue-holding to avoid saying in a news report what any rational person would undoubtedly like to say about any attacker who dares to quash so many innocent lives without justification. I touched on this in my previous post, "Of all the days to do a sports report..." At an absolute minimum, if I'd been delivering a newscast last night, it would have been nearly impossible to read such a report without an edge of anger and disgust in my voice. I understand better where that questioner was coming from all those years ago.
Another memory comes to mind. Once, after I finished broadcasting a newscast I'd written, I talked with the DJ off the air about how much the world had changed. "No place is safe," he said. "Anywhere...The streets of Chesterfield, even...When I was a kid, we didn't think twice about things like trick-or-treating. We just had fun. Now, no place is safe."
"No place is safe," he said on that day...in 1993.
I can just imagine what he would say now.
