Practical Journalism How to Write News

Practical Journalism

How to Write News

HELEN SISSONS

Practical Journalism

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page i

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page ii

Practical Journalism

How to Write News

Helen Sissons

●●

SAGE Publications

London Thousand Oaks New Delhi

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page iii

First published 2006

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or

private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication

may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or

by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of

the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction,

in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the

reproduction outside those terms should be sent to

the publishers.

SAGE Publications Ltd

1 Oliver’s Yard

55 City Road

London EC1Y 1SP

SAGE Publications Inc.

2455 Teller Road

Thousand Oaks, California 91320

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd

B-42, Panchsheel Enclave

Post Box 4109

New Delhi 110 017

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

ISBN-10 0-7619-4926-7 ISBN-13 978-0-7619-4926-8

ISBN-10 0-7619-4927-5 (pbk) ISBN-13 978-0-7619-4927-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005938005

Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

Printed on paper from sustainable resources

Printed and bound in Great Britain at the Alden Press, Witney

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page iv

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction xiii

1 The Journalist 1

Being a journalist 2

What makes a good journalist? 3

The digital newsroom 15

Is journalism for you? 16

Case study: My career as a journalist by John McIntyre 18

Summing up 20

Review questions 21

Exercises 21

FURTHER READING

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page xv

Sissions-Prelims.qxd 9/26/2006 5:34 PM Page xvi

THE JOURNALIST

Good journalists enjoy finding things out and then telling people what they have

discovered. At work the journalist will

• ask the questions to which the public want answers

• persevere to find the truth of events

• be accurate and balanced when constructing the story

• present it in the clearest and most powerful way

• have an extensive network of sources.

Journalism is full of lying, cheating, drunken, cocaine-sniffing, unethical people. It’s a

wonderful profession. (Piers Morgan, then editor of the

Daily Mirror,

quoted in

, April

2002)

When journalists of my generation first entered newspapers in Britain in the 1980s, there

was still a suspicion of graduates among news editors. Graduates were considered soft,

lacking in life experience and practical common sense and, worse still, they were seen as

expecting special treatment. On my first local paper there were journalists without

degrees, some with no A-levels. Journalism was seen as a craft, which was more about

natural instinct and talent than it was about education. A journalist, or ‘hack’, was a hard-

bitten operator who could smell a story at 200 paces and was not averse to the odd ques-

tionable practice to sniff it out.

There are still editors around who adhere to this view, but when I joined the BBC a few

years later, all the recent entrants were graduates. Many things were changing. No longer

were newsrooms full of the clatter of typewriters and there were no hunching, chain-

smoking, hacks stinking of booze (although this was always a stereotype beloved of

Hollywood and Broadway).The journalists I work with are more likely to go running than

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 1

drinking at lunchtime and the classic view of the journalist as grubby, hard-drinking and

lacking in any of the social graces is incorrect, at least most of the time.

Some of the changes no doubt can be put down to new and faster technologies and we

will be talking more about these later in the chapter. It is now possible to transmit a report

from the most remote parts of the globe and have it on air minutes later. This is exciting,

but it is also a challenge to the journalist who has little time to assess the significance of

an incident or situation before they have to explain it to the general public. In addition,

the online news organisations and 24-hour broadcast news channels press for constant

updates, presenting huge demands (and opportunities) for the journalist.

Being a journalist

Journalism is about telling real-life stories and explaining the world beyond a person’s

direct experience. Good journalists shine lights where the public cannot see, they bring

knowledge where there was ignorance and, if they are very good, empathy where there

was antipathy and action where there was inertia.

The journalist gathers facts about the story; decides which of those to include and

which to omit; how to structure the story and which words to use to tell it. But it is all a

waste of time if they fail to communicate what they have found to the audience. If

nobody is reading or listening or watching, then the journalist cannot inform, educate or

enthuse. Therefore we have to find stories that people will be interested in and tell them

in the most exciting but truthful way possible.

In essence the journalist is a pedlar of information. It has to be packaged attractively to

be inviting to the reader, listener or viewer and it has to be accurate and fair to be a quality

product. And journalists share many of the same characteristics whether they are weekly

newspaper reporters covering council meetings, journalists on regional evening papers writ-

ing about important court cases, national radio reporters covering Parliament, or writers on

a broadsheet or compact reporting a natural disaster on the other side of the world.

That is not to say that all working journalists are conscientious or moral.There are those

who are sloppy and as lazy as, for example, the one who admitted to colleagues that when

he worked on a national tabloid newspaper he would sometimes make up quotes rather

than go out and collect them. He could predict, he said, what people would say. There are

those who also take the credit for other people’s work and those who abuse the trust of

interviewees by lying about their true intentions, even stealing photos of loved ones once

they have conned their way inside the house. I wish I could say these people do not pros-

per in the profession, but many do. So let’s not be starry-eyed.

If journalism is to remain a profession that people can rely upon to help them make

decisions about their lives, then journalists must resist the temptation to create content or

alter the tone of an article. The latter can be particularly hard to resist.

Journalists can come under pressure from editors to ‘jazz up’ their accounts. And there

are owners and advertisers who want to influence what is written (see Chapter 2). Many

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 2

journalists work on under-resourced newspapers, internet sites and radio stations, and

have little time to check out stories. Some rarely get out of the office and must conduct

nearly all their interviews over the telephone.

But good journalists are badly needed. Public confidence in journalists and their journal-

ism is at rock bottom. The exposure of Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter found to

be fabricating stories, and the fallout from the Hutton Inquiry into a BBC journalist’s report

that the Government made false claims in its dossier on the threat from the then Iraqi

President Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have only

added to public suspicion of the media. (See Chapters 5 and 12 for more about these cases.)

An ICM poll for the National Council of Voluntary Organisations in July 2002 found

that half of the 1,000 people questioned believed journalists would not be honest when

interviewed.

Moreover, research by the University of Leeds shows that while people rely

heavily on the media for information, most of them distrust the media’s motives and

operational methods.They feel the news organisations are ‘just looking for a story’ and are

driven primarily by circulation and audience figures. The scepticism affected all media,

but mostly the press, and the tabloid press in particular.

The media ethics organisation,

PressWise, reports that around 10,000 complaints a year in Britain are being made to

regulatory bodies by people unhappy about what is reported about them.

Yet journalists need the public to trust them, otherwise the very reason for their

existence – to inform – is negated. Fortunately, despite poor pay, long hours and often

difficult working conditions, there are excellent journalists doing sterling work. Most

would not want to do any other job, because for anyone who wants to be where the action

is, it is the best work going.

What makes a good journalist?

So what qualities does a good journalist need? It has to be noted that in talking to jour-

nalists while researching this book, many found it quite a challenge to explain how they

do their job and what it is that makes them effective. For most practitioners, journalism

and the skills needed to recognise and report news become over the years instinctive.

However, when pushed they came up with the following qualities: being a people person,

a questioner, a verifier, accurate, persevering, courageous, a good judge of news, curious,

an able writer, creative, competitive, ethical, fair, balanced, objective, cultivating of con-

tacts, well informed.

A people person

Journalism often involves dabbling in the stuff of other people’s lives.

Good journalists

do so responsibly and ethically.

Journalists have a fascination with the affairs of men – they are people-watchers and

many love nothing better than sitting alone in a café or on a bus listening to other

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 3

people’s conversations. As well as being good listeners, journalists should be good

communicators, able to deal with a wide variety of people and situations, from cabinet

ministers to homeless people.They should be sensitive to people’s feelings and able to win

their confidence while recognising the news angle and pursuing it.

A questioner

The journalist wants and needs to know everything they can about the events on which

they report or the issues that catch their interest. They must be full of questions and

intent on establishing as many facts as possible. Sometimes that means asking a string of

questions until the crux of the matter is clear, as only by understanding can they pass on

the story to the general public.

Never be afraid to ask the obvious question, even if it makes you look stupid, says Mike

McCarthy, bureau chief at Sky News in Manchester, who spent time covering the war in

Afghanistan in 2001:

When I arrived in Kabul, I had to go to a military briefing in a hotel. I got there a bit

late and missed the introductions so I didn’t know the name of the man leading the

briefing who was also the military commander. I absolutely had to know his name,

because it was a very important fact. For one thing, I didn’t want to get caught out on

air speaking live to a presenter and not know who had given out the information I was

referring to. So I asked his name, I did feel stupid but not as stupid as I would have

looked had I not known on air.

There are two lessons here – one is having the courage to ask and the other is being punc-

tual. As Mike himself points out, if you arrive late to the event, as a journalist you are

likely to miss the main story.

Accurate/a verifier

Asking questions is often to do with verifying the facts, not only questioning the people

but questioning what they tell you. Always be sceptical of what people say and be

willing to ask yourself why they are saying it. Never just accept what you are being told,

especially by governments – even more so if those governments are at war.

Journalists have a duty to do all they can to present as accurate a picture as possible to

the public. Every journalist I spoke to considered accuracy to be crucial. Ian Lockwood,

editor of the Craven Herald in Skipton, says that journalists are often unfairly accused of

making mistakes:

People have to have some confidence that what they’re reading is correct. There are

some who believe there are lots of mistakes, but actually there are very few. For exam-

ple, last week we wrote about a local boy who had a part in a television programme.

We said he’d got the part because he could play the piano and he had curly blonde

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 4

hair. His grandmother rang up and said we’d got it all wrong. Yet when we went through

it line by line there was actually nothing wrong. The problem for the grandmother was

that she believed we’d implied he’d only got the part because of his piano playing and

blonde hair, not because he could act.

In the era of instant news, getting it right all the time is becoming harder to achieve. Derek

Crawshaw, who spent several years as a BBC 5-Live reporter in Belfast, explains that work-

ing for a station that prides itself on its ‘live’ nature gives the reporter special problems:

You have got to be there, be first and be live. But there are times when it’s difficult to get

as much information as you’d like. You have got to be secure and confident in knowing

that what you’re saying is correct and you’ve got to be confident enough to say ‘I don’t

know enough yet’. You come under great pressure as a live reporter to go on air. You’ve

got to be first and be accurate. It’s an easy thing to say, but it’s a hard thing to do.

Being able to say to a news editor that you’re not ready to go on air or to hand in a story

is an important part of the job of a reporter. Never publish facts you are not certain of but

find out as much as possible in the time available.

By striving to uncover what you can, the journalist discharges their duty towards the

people who cannot be there themselves, says Cathy Killick, a television reporter with BBC

Look North in Leeds:

There was a bad crash on the A1. Hundreds of vehicles were involved. I knew nobody

would know exactly how many, so with the help of a reporter from the

Yorkshire Post

newspaper I counted them. We found it was 600 vehicles spread over three-quarters

of a mile of motorway. You could see the chaos from the pictures, but I wanted to ver-

ify the facts. I had the time; often you don’t in this sort of situation. I think this is what

my job is about. I am the eyes and ears of the public and I want to get it right. To do

this you have to apply yourself.

Persevering

Without perseverance, a news journalist will never uncover anything but the most run-of-

the-mill stories.

You have got to have your quarry in view and to keep going and get it or as close to it

as you can. So you don’t fall at the first hurdle, you don’t knock on someone’s door

and if they don’t answer think that person isn’t in and give up. You leave a note, you

try someone else who may be able to help you, you go back later. (Cathy Killick, BBC

Look North

)

However, never mistake persistence for harassment. A journalist should not try to obtain

information through intimidation.

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 5

For some journalists it was determination that secured them a job in the first place.

I was told by one foreign editor that as a young journalist he sat on the steps of the

newspaper’s building and accosted the editor every day until he agreed to take him on and

give him a chance.

Persistence by the editor of a local paper resulted in freedom for a man wrongly con-

victed of murder. It took Matlock Mercury editor Don Hale nearly eight years of cam-

paigning and investigating until he won an appeal hearing for Stephen Downing. The

Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and Downing was freed after serving 27 years in

jail for the murder of a Derbyshire woman, Wendy Sewell.

The miscarriage of justice that put Stephen Downing, then only 17 years old, behind

bars came to light only because Don Hale decided to go against the advice of his superi-

ors and investigate. By then Downing had been in jail 20 years and the case was largely

forgotten. Hale’s investigations found that although Downing had admitted the murder,

he had a mental age of 11 and had told his father that he only admitted it so he could go

home. Hale also discovered new witnesses who said they’d seen another bloodstained man

leave the graveyard on the night of the murder.

When Don Hale started publishing stories about his findings, he suffered threats and

intimidation and he was nearly killed by a speeding sports car, but he didn’t give up. He

said the intimidation only strengthened his belief that he was on the right track.

I can think of nothing more frightening than to be locked away for life for a crime you

haven’t committed. Who can you turn to? Who is prepared to listen to a convicted

killer? I was continually told that it was not my job to take on this sort of challenge.

So whose job was it? Who else was prepared to endure years of persecution?

Courageous

Journalists need courage in many situations. Sometimes it is the courage to go where you

are not welcome and face very real dangers; at other times it might be the courage to ask

the right questions.

Reporters Without Borders’ (www.rsf.org) Annual Report, published in 2005, highlighted

some of the dangers facing journalists worldwide during the previous year. Fifty-three jour-

nalists and 15 media assistants (fixers, drivers, translators, technicians, security staff and

others) were killed worldwide in 2004 while doing their job or for the stories they wrote.

This was up from the 40 journalists and 2 media assistants that were killed in 2003. Things

were not looking much better for 2005, as in the first four months 19 journalists lost their

lives. Many others are imprisoned or threatened every year. In 2004 at least 1,140 journal-

ists were attacked or received threats and more than 900 were imprisoned.

Despite the dangers, journalists continue to work to bring accurate information to the

people. Marie Colvin, a Sunday Times reporter who lost an eye while reporting in 2001 in Sri

Lanka, says journalism has become more dangerous and at the same time more important. In

a speech to World Press Freedom Day in May 2002, she said that while in Israel the only way

she could prove the Israeli Government was lying about Jenin Refugee camp on the West

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 6

Bank was to get out there and see. That was a dangerous undertaking. Israeli forces had

invaded the camp in April and dozens of people were killed in the ensuing fighting.

If it takes a lot of guts for international reporters to uphold the right to report freely

and honestly, it possibly takes even more courage and fortitude when you are the local

media and you do not have a plane ticket out of the situation. Speaking at World Press

Freedom Day in 2001 was Mark Chavunduka, a journalist from Zimbabwe. He and

another reporter were jailed and tortured by President Robert Mugabe’s regime for

reporting that an alleged plot to overthrow the Government had been foiled. They were

charged with publishing information likely to cause alarm and despondency.

What happened to us was a barbaric assault, which was worsened by the fact that the

state never disproved the article that led to our arrest. What prolonged our incarcera-

tion was that we refused to reveal our sources. The military emphasised throughout

that the reason we were being held was because we refused to reveal our sources in

the military and I’m very proud to say that two years later that is still the case.

Both men were released on bail because of the huge international outcry. They challenged

the law under which they were arrested in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, and were

successful. The Government has since been introducing new laws to restrict the media.

Refusing to name sources in a democratic country where you are not likely to face tor-

ture is less obviously courageous, but it takes a brave man to uphold a principle and face

imprisonment. Individual journalists confront this dilemma every year. A Manchester

Evening News journalist, Steve Panter, faced a possible jail sentence for contempt of court

(see Chapter 10 for more on contempt of court) when he repeatedly refused to disclose

the identity of the source of a story about the IRA. The article named the prime suspect

of the IRA’s bombing of a shopping centre in Manchester in 1996 which injured 200

people.The attorney general decided in July 2002 not to bring contempt proceedings, say-

ing it was not in the public interest to prosecute.

Manchester Evening News editor, Paul Horrocks, said about the case:

It took great personal strength [by Steve Panter] not to reveal his source when ordered to do

so by a judge. He was standing by our basic code of journalism and we are proud of him.

The public must be able to trust us not to reveal confidential sources, unless there

are exceptional circumstances. There is a worrying trend in this country of courts

wanting to know media sources. This must be resisted.

Journalists need mettle to refuse to answer questions, and on occasion also when they

have to ask questions that people do not want to answer. The journalist should be able to

walk into a meeting full of high-powered politicians and be capable of dealing with them

as equals. They should also be able to telephone or knock on the door of someone who

doesn’t want to speak and ask them awkward questions.

Often young or inexperienced journalists are afraid of asking questions that they think

they should already know the answer to. A good rule of thumb is that if you don’t know or

understand something, there will be others who don’t.

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 7

A good judge of news

A journalist who does not recognise a story when faced with one is no good to their edi-

tor or news organisation.

When I was on work experience I was told about a young reporter on a broadsheet news-

paper who returned after a lunch break to find the office in a state of high excitement. She

was told that a bank had been robbed very close by and they were making calls to try to find

out more about it. The trainee said that she knew about the robbery as she had been in the

bank when it happened. When asked why she hadn’t told the newsdesk straight away, she

said she hadn’t realised it was important. Unsurprisingly she was fired then and there.

Her mistake was to think that because her field was business and finance, other sorts of

news stories, such as crime, were of no consequence. When the World Trade Center was

attacked on September 11, 2001 and around 3,000 people lost their lives, many news

organisations had to rely on reporters who just happened to be in New York. Some were

on other assignments, others on holiday. Everyone was expected to be up to the challenge.

The Daily Telegraph’s deputy editor, Sarah Sands, was there for New York fashion week.

She was walking towards the World Trade Center when the attack started and was able to

file a very detailed eyewitness piece for the paper.

The Sun’s new New York correspondent, Brian Flynn, was flat hunting in the city and was

on the phone to his London office when he saw the first plane hit the towers:

Similarly,

Shropshire Star deputy chief reporter Tracey O’Sullivan was in New York for a family wed-

ding when the attack happened.

Both were able to provide personal accounts.

In its analysis of the reporting of the attacks on America a few days after they hap-

pened, the Press Gazette, a trade paper for journalists, points out that it was perhaps the

first time that the same story appeared on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. It

also led the world’s television and radio bulletins.

It was a day when all journalists knew

without a doubt which story, among all the other events that day, was the most impor-

tant. In fact many editors even used the identical photograph to illustrate the attacks,

taken by Spencer Platt, a photographer with Getty Images.

As a journalist you are almost never off duty. If you are on holiday and happen to witness

or be part of a newsworthy event, then you should take out your notebook and start work.

We will be looking at the question ‘What is news?’ in Chapter 2, but throughout your career

you will be developing your news sense, learning which stories are the important ones,

which angles the most interesting, which details should be highlighted and which ignored.

Curious

Much that has already been said is about being curious: curious about people and curious

about events. Journalists are what? how? when? where? who? and why? people. In the last

instance curiosity is the motivation for everything the journalist does.

Nosiness is what made a young BBC regional reporter, Clarence Mitchell, wonder why

a fleet of police cars was speeding down the M1 motorway late one Friday night while

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 8

behind them the motorway was being closed. Mitchell, who was then a reporter in Hull,

increased his speed and followed the police cars until they reached the scene of a plane

crash near the Leicestershire village of Kegworth. A British Midland passenger jet en route

from Heathrow to Northern Ireland had crashed a few hundred yards from the runway

at East Midlands airport. It had ploughed into an embankment of the M1 motorway,

killing 47 people.

Clarence was the only reporter to reach the wreckage before a security cordon was put

up. He was able to ring the BBC newsdesk in London and describe what he could see for

listeners and viewers until a camera crew arrived to get shots to go with his reports. His

resourcefulness led to a job with the national reporter pool in London.

An able writer

It’s pretty obvious that words are the journalist’s tools. No matter what medium the jour-

nalist works in, be it television, radio, print or online, they need to be able to express ideas

and information in writing. So a clear, grammatically correct writing style is a basic

requirement. And while a journalistic style can be taught, good spelling and punctuation

are a prerequisite. Any mistakes in an application form will result in it going straight in

the bin.

Gillian Hargreaves, a reporter with BBC Radio 4’s World at One and PM, says the jour-

nalist has to love language: ‘Your writing skills have to be lyrical. You don’t need to use

big words but you need to be able to explain the complicated simply and to convey the

story whether it is the drama or the enormity.’

Creative

Being creative can mean using language in an original manner or thinking of new ways of

manipulating pictures and sound. It can also mean finding creative ways of covering stories.

Output editor of the BBC’s Six O’Clock News, Jon Williams, believes that looking at

things in an original way is a key skill:

Don’t be formulaic – we want imaginative and creative reporters. I will never get angry

with someone who tries to do something different and it doesn’t work. If someone

tries to be original, that’s good. We covered the story of the GCSE results. The stan-

dard story is that girls do better than boys. Yet yesterday 30,000 people left with no

GCSEs at all. That was our angle.

ITN’s 5 News were able to secure an unusual exclusive when they used a satellite video-

phone during the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001. This allowed a farmer who was unable to

leave his farm during the outbreak to file a regular diary for the programme. The farmer in

Cumbria was in isolation for several weeks, but after neighbours delivered the videophone

he could be interviewed regularly on the six o’clock news programme. It meant the

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 9

programme could talk to the people living through the crisis as it unfolded. For example, the

farmer was interviewed the day he received a letter saying his animals were included in a

pre-emptive cull.

Competitive

Most journalists are competitive by nature and delight in beating other news organisations

to an exclusive. Being first and fastest is a large part of the job.

Take John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, who walked into Kabul, Afghanistan’s

capital, on 13 November 2001 after the Taliban fighters had retreated and before the

Northern Alliance troops arrived. He gleefully told a Radio 4 audience that he and his

team were the first into the city: ‘It was BBC people who liberated the city – we got in

ahead of the Northern Alliance. We passed through and walked in, and the scenes of

rejoicing and delight were extraordinary.’

Ethical and fair

What constitutes ‘ethical’ is one of the most vexed questions in journalism. Do the ends

justify the means? Is it ever fair to trick someone into giving you a story? If the person

will tell you their story only if you pay them, is that right?

Journalists talk little about ethics, but most face ethical decisions of one kind or another

every day. Should they knock on the door of the family who have just lost two children

in a car crash to ask for an interview and a photo, or telephone first or leave a note? Should

they use the rash quote by the headteacher that most of her pupils are impossible to teach

or the more reasonable quote, which more accurately reflects what she thinks, in which

she says it is a challenge? The second is truer but less colourful. It is also less hurtful to

the children.

Bureau chief of Sky News in Manchester, Mike McCarthy, says:

You are the audience’s representative, you’re there to represent them. You are in a

privileged position and you’ve got to do what the vast majority of people would find

acceptable in the circumstances. In this way you are being ethical.

As John Herbert writes in Journalism in the Digital Age, ethics infuses all news gathering,

reporting and communicating. If you ask a journalist whether they are ethical, the vast

majority will say they are, but few can explain in any detail how. Most take each situation

as it comes and have a personal set of ethical rules that works for them. Jon Williams

agrees:

Being ethical is the bottom line of anything. Some ethical beliefs are personal and

there are some that are shared. But I’d be lying if I said I had a plastic card on which

they are all written. But then if everyone is just following a corporate rule book, then

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 10

ethics would mean nothing. You have to ask yourself if you can sleep at night, then

they mean everything.

Some organisations give guidelines to reporters. The Guardian in its editorial guidelines

explains that journalists should be sensitive to any outside interests they have which may

come into conflict with the integrity of the paper’s journalism. Staff are warned they must

not use their position for private benefit and that no payment, gift or other advantage

should undermine accuracy, fairness or independence. Any ‘freebies’ can only be accepted

on the understanding that the journalist will report the assignment as he or she sees fit.

Most journalists will make ethical mistakes at one time or another during their career.

Many do things as a young reporter that they later wish they hadn’t.

Mike McCarthy has a typical story. In 1989, while working for a BBC local television

news station, he covered the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 football fans were crushed

to death in Sheffield. In the evening BBC Network News in London asked him to film

the bereaved families being counselled in a nearby church hall.

I didn’t want to do it, but I was relatively new to television journalism and too green to

say no. I didn’t feel confident to question their judgment. So I went along. It was dis-

astrous. Even though the vicar agreed for us to go inside, some of the friends and

relatives were very upset. We intruded into their grief. Now, in a similar situation,

I would say no. I’m not saying you can’t film people in grief but you have to be very

sensitive to their experience and how they are likely to react.

Covering grief is one of the hardest parts of the job of a journalist, especially if it comes

in the form of a ‘death-knock’, where you are asked to go to the house of someone

involved in a tragedy. Some journalists never feel comfortable with this aspect of the job.

Yet if you can get it right, interviews gained this way can lead to moving, emotionally raw

news stories. Some people in this situation want to talk about their loved ones and tell

others what a wonderful person they were.

If you borrow a photograph, make sure it is returned. A colleague once lost the only

photograph of a dead husband. Think about how hard that would be to explain. It is a

mistake they have always regretted and can never put right. Be aware that a photograph

such as the annual school photo may have been taken by a professional photographer and

will be copyrighted.

There are other forms of ‘doorstepping’, as it is called, and they too can cause ethical

problems. Doorstepping is when a reporter approaches or confronts someone without prior

arrangement.This can happen in public, say on the street, or when the reporter knocks on the

door of their house. It is used in cases where it is felt this is the only way this person may speak

to the reporter. Perhaps they are someone involved in a crime or anti-social behaviour and have

repeatedly refused an interview on unreasonable grounds or they are a public figure involved

in a scandal. They can also be, as is mentioned above, ordinary people involved in a tragedy.

But doorstepping is not the same as harassment and intimidation. If there are 15 or 20

people camped outside a house, looking through windows or prowling around the garden,

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 11

they are bound to make those inside feel intimidated. The Editors’ Code of Practice,

which sets professional standards by which members of the press are expected to abide,

includes sections on harassment and states: ‘Journalists and photographers must neither

obtain nor seek to obtain information or pictures through intimidation, harassment or

persistent pursuit.’ (See Chapter 12 for a discussion of the Editors’ Code of Practice,

which is set out in full in the Appendix.)

Balanced/objective

There is controversy in the world of reporting over whether the professional requirement

to try to be impartial or objective is possible or even desirable. Many such as Jason Burke,

the Observer’s chief reporter, accept that they cannot be objective no matter how hard

they try to write the full story:

The journalist lays out the situation for the readers to make up their own mind, but a

journalist’s own reactions will inevitably colour how they will report. Good impassioned

reporting, with genuine sympathy and a good knowledge of the context, should be

enough. No one can be entirely objective. The editing process starts when you choose

who to interview.

Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times agrees:

Bias is inevitable in any grown-up journalist’s work. You can try to be balanced (and

you’re a better journalist for it) but in your choice of topics, selection of guests, pre-

sentation of facts, you inevitably show your hand.

This isn’t to say that journalism should degenerate into simple propaganda or out-

right advocacy, at least not in the presentation of news rather than opinion.

Trying to present many sides of an issue is the mark of an honest journalist; main-

taining a distinction between news and opinion is the mark of an honest editor.

On the extreme of this argument is Geraldo Rivera, a former television presenter and

chat-show host who donned a flak jacket and became Fox News’s chief war correspon-

dent in Afghanistan. He brought with him a new style of war reporting that was anything

but impartial. He said during a broadcast in November 2001: ‘I’ve got a New York City

fire department hat that I want to put on the head of [Osama Bin Laden’s] corpse. We

want Osama Bin Laden to end up either behind bars or six feet under or maybe just one

foot under.

For Reuters’ Kabul correspondent, Sayed Salahuddin, however, impartiality is one of

the most treasured tenets of journalism:

I have this belief in Reuters’ accuracy and impartiality – I am very proud of that. We

should continue to follow that line and not be bullied by lies and propaganda of people

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 12

in the world. If we can follow that pattern, we will be able to remain impartial and

people will trust in what we do.

All journalists can make sure they balance their stories by explaining as many of the argu-

ments involved as possible. And if you are accusing someone of something, they should

be allowed to respond.

Cultivating contacts

One of the first things any journalist should do is set up a contacts book. This should be

indexed so you can file names alphabetically and if it is loose-leafed it is easier to keep

relevant, as you can add pages or replace those that are out of date. It is sensible to keep

a copy of your contacts book, either on paper or on a computer. If you can afford it, think

about investing in a personal digital assistant (PDA). These make excellent and very

portable contacts books.

The journalist should enter in their contacts book anyone they speak to whom they

may wish to speak to again. They should include as many details about them as possible:

the name in full and correctly spelled, their address, a work and a home phone number,

their mobile number, an email address and perhaps fax number. It is wise to include a

brief note about their interests or expertise.

A contacts book is likely to include:

• doctors, surgeons and scientists

• academics

• emergency services, victim support units, the detective leading a murder investigation

• local courts, hospitals, health authorities and their press officers

• victims or their families who could speak out in future for changes in the law or com-

ment on similar cases (e.g. a family whose child was killed during a school trip or was

run down by a drink driver)

• pressure groups, campaign groups and charities. They are always useful for comments

and you will find there are groups covering many of the issues on which you will

report. You need to know those that are run nationally and have spokesmen and

women in your area, and who they are, and those specific to your area

• schools, their headteachers and parents’ representatives

• churches and their leaders. Make sure you know their correct titles: is it Reverend,

Right Reverend, Father?

• Politicians, including MPs, local councillors and potential candidates

• those who know. These include shopkeepers, especially those working in the local post

offices; postmen and women; milkmen and women; publicans; the neighbourhood

watch; people who have lived somewhere for a long time

• representatives of any big companies or industries in the area and their unions.

There are many more, and we will be looking at sources for news in Chapter 8.

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 13

You should carry your contacts book at all times – you never know when you might

need it. It is also not wise to share too many of your contacts with your colleagues, espe-

cially those who are not regular interviewees.

One of my best contacts when I worked on a local paper, and one of the most unusual,

was a magician I met while doing a feature about children’s parties. He was a member of

the Magic Circle and gave me several exclusives that were picked up by national news-

papers and television news programmes. He made it clear that he did not want it known

where the stories were coming from or he could be thrown out of the Circle. I was care-

ful to keep his confidence.

Keeping the anonymity of a source who speaks to you only on the understanding that

their identity will be kept confidential is vital for journalists if they wish people to trust

them. They may be risking the loss of their jobs or in some cases their lives. So if you

promise not to reveal the identity of an interviewee, then you must keep that promise. In

broadcasting this can mean obscuring the face of an interviewee and using an actor’s

voice. Anonymity is only really appropriate in a few cases and you should think hard

before agreeing not to name someone. It may be warranted:

• for reasons of safety – a person may be risking their life by talking to you, for example,

if they are a former member of a terrorist organisation

• if they may lose their job – for example, a whistle-blower in a big company

• to avoid undue embarrassment – this could mean someone with a medical complaint

• for legal reasons, although interviewing a criminal or someone trying to evade the law

is not usually ethical

• because you will not be able to tell the story otherwise. You must think carefully

whether the story is worth the promise.

Once a promise is given it must be kept, and that can mean the journalist coming under

pressure from the police or the courts to show their notes or hand over pictures or names.

It can lead to journalists facing a fine or jail for contempt of court. (See Chapter 10 for a

full discussion of these issues.)

Well informed

Ben Bradlee, the legendary editor of the Washington Post, told a colleague of mine in an

interview that the best thing a journalist can have is a good head.

Throughout their working life, the journalist will be scrutinising and interpreting the

incidents on which they report. The reporting process involves the journalist deciding

which people to interview and which facts are salient to telling the story. The general

public relies upon the journalist to bring them a true interpretation of events.

To discharge the role well, the journalist needs to be able to make judgments about

what is significant and what is not. They cannot do this well without a good general

knowledge and familiarity with current events.

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 14

Aspiring young journalists sometimes lack the necessary broader perspective, possibly

because they are the products of an age of niche marketing and personalised infor-

mation. They take all they can get on their favourite subject but leave the rest. As a

result, they may know little about nine-tenths of what is going on around them. What

hope has a teenager of reaching a person aged 40 if he or she knows every scrap of

minutiae about a film star or sports personality, but thinks the NASDAQ is a rock band

from Seattle?

A general awareness of how government and society works will help the journalist to estab-

lish quickly where to go for information. If you have a story about asylum seekers, you will

be a lot quicker at collecting the information if you know the places to contact, such as the

Home Office, British Refugee Council, Human Rights Watch and MigrationWatch UK.

Journalists should also know what stories their own newspaper, radio or television sta-

tion is following. This means keeping up with the organisation’s output and being aware

of ongoing campaigns. There is little more irritating to an editor than having to explain a

story that should be familiar to a reporter before they can set them to work.

Being aware of the news agenda of your organisation will also help you to pitch ideas

at the morning meeting and the planning meeting if there is one.

The digital newsroom

New technology has transformed the way news is gathered and relayed to the public. An

event across the globe can be on air as it happens or within minutes. This demands of the

journalist an ability to respond to and sum up a situation more quickly than ever before.

On occasion you will still have to send a story through the post or fax it, but nowadays

copy, even pictures and sound, can be phoned in or sent by computer from anywhere in the

world, including the most lonely or inhospitable places. All you need is a satellite phone or

a laptop attached to a phone line, mobile or satellite phone to transmit your story.

During the war in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001, lightweight and portable satellite

videophones were vital for getting reports out for television. We saw regular live reports

by satellite phone from Nic Robertson of CNN and others. He used a videophone to

transmit pictures from inside the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The BBC’s Emma Simpson filed a broadcast quality television report via the internet

from Antigua in January 2003 about a 15-year-old schoolboy who had become the

youngest person ever to sail the Atlantic Ocean single-handed. She also supplied a writ-

ten report for the BBC’s online news service.

Multi-skilling

This is the way the profession is moving; reporters are increasingly expected to file stories

quickly from wherever they are and to be able to work across any medium. Whereas in

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 15

the past you were a newspaper reporter, a radio reporter or a television reporter, now you

are expected to be flexible and multi-skilled.

New digital technology is thus also affecting the way journalists gather and present

information. If you work for a newspaper and are sent out to report an event, you could

be asked to take still photos as well as to write a story for the paper. You may also be asked

to supply a version of your story for the paper’s internet site, including perhaps recorded

interviews and moving pictures. You could, in addition, be expected to serve text services

such as Ceefax and mobile phone news services.

As a broadcast journalist, you may need to supply a report for both television and radio

and be expected to film and edit your own television pieces. Ian Myatt, a senior producer

in new media for BBC English Regions, believes this is a positive move:

Multi-skilling gives you more creative input into how you present ideas. A journalist will

set up a story, go out and film it, conduct the interviews and collect some soundbites,

come back and write it up. So you’ve got audio, video, still images and text. The jour-

nalist puts all that into a database and the computer will display the information on

whatever platform the user wishes, PC, Wap phone, TV.

He acknowledges that currently some working journalists don’t see the need for multi-

skilling: ‘People have got to take the blinkers off in newsrooms that say I work for TV or

radio. There has got to be cultural change in all news organisations.’

With our round-the-clock news operations, some journalists complain they are pulled

in all directions and are unable properly to gather the information because they are field-

ing demands from too many outlets. Online news organisations and 24-hour broadcast

news allow news to be accessible when people want it, not when news organisations and

journalists wish to present it. These outlets are voracious, insatiable beasts that constantly

need to be updated, imposing huge demands on the journalist.

Much of what journalists do is what they’ve always done, only faster. For example,

using the internet allows the journalist to locate information fast. But they still need to

select only the relevant information and verify it. Knowing how to search for informa-

tion on the web and turn it into news is an important skill for the journalist in the dig-

ital age.

Is journalism for you?

Journalism is not a nine-to-five occupation. You’ve just logged out of your computer and

are packing your bag when a call comes in to say there’s a fire or a siege or a riot and you

are on your way. You are not home for dinner; you may not be home all night. The unpre-

dictability of the work and the shift systems operated in many organisations can put a

strain on personal relationships.

Many people want to go into journalism because they are good at English and like writ-

ing. That’s fine, but it is not enough.You need to have a love of current events. If you have

Practical Journalism

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 16

never read a newspaper or would prefer to watch Desparate Housewives rather than the

evening news, then this is not the right job.

Sophie Raworth, presenter of BBC’s Six O’Clock News, insists it’s also not a job for

those chasing fame and glamour:

You have to have a passion for news and current affairs and for getting information

together. You can’t be in a newsroom and be obsessed with getting your face on

screen or people will think that’s all you want. You’ve got to have a good grounding in

journalism and reporting.

I never intended to present, I fell into it. I was working as a radio reporter and then

as a producer in Brussels and I planned to be a producer. Then by accident I met a

man who was a regional head of centre and he said I should go and work for him as

a reporter. Through that I got on-screen experience and then I started presenting. To

be honest I found it a very difficult transition to make but you have to be determined

and never give up.

It’s an exciting job and a great business to be in. It’s given me access to places,

events and people I’d never have had. It’s permanently interesting.

Editors look for people who do not need spoon-feeding, according to Ian Lockwood, edi-

tor of the Craven Herald:

I look for an enquiring mind and someone who can come up with ideas. They have to

be interested in what’s going on and have the ability to supply us with stories.

We give interviewees a simple test to see if they can recognise a story. We present

them with some facts and see if they choose the correct angle.

The worst kind of applicants are the ones that sit there and say they like writing.

They might be able to write a beautiful 2,500 word essay on

The Tempest

but can they

write four paragraphs on a charity race?

Zenobia Tilley graduated in 2001 having done a politics degree and has worked as a free-

lance journalist since then:

What university doesn’t teach you is how to survive 12-hour days and it doesn’t show

you how to think on your feet. I never realised what a constant battle it would be to

get a story. When you’re a student, people go out of their way to help you, and they’re

less suspicious. I’ve just spent a whole morning trying to reach people on the phone

who don’t want to talk to me.

But even though it’s badly paid I can’t imagine doing any other job. I enjoy the buzz of

the newsroom. I enjoy meeting people; I feel a part of society. It’s a duty to fight for truth.

If you still wish to be a journalist, think long and hard about which area of journalism you

wish to enter. If you wish to be a broadcast journalist, make an honest assessment of yourself –

are you comfortable in front of a microphone and/or a camera and is your voice clear?

The Journalist

Sissiions-3432-Ch-01.qxd 9/26/2006 5:36 PM Page 17