GEAH wrote:
stop_bailouts wrote:
Oh, it's a "feature", so that means you don't have to be honest, then? Silly me - here I was thinking good journalism entailed researching a topic and then writing an article, not writing the article and then looking for quotes to back up what you already concluded. What if the interviews don't go the way you expected them to? I guess you just make something up? Wouldn't want to make the editor angry now, would we?
I'm curious - in what section of the newspaper do the "features" appear, and how are they differentiated from "regular" articles? And where does the disclaimer appear letting the readers know that the story was concocted ahead of time and isn't to be taken seriously?
It's not inherently honest or dishonest. It's about telling a particular story.
If you think a story on a Latino hockey player will be interesting, you put out feelers for Latino hockey players. It doesn't mean there aren't white hockey players.
If you think a story about someone who commutes a long way to work will be interesting, you try to find someone who drives 100 miles to work. It doesn't discount the existence of people who drive 3 miles to work.
Bad analogy. "Latino hockey players" is a TOPIC. "Commuting long distances" is a TOPIC. Those are not conclusions. I agree - if you want to do a story about boomerang buyers, you put out feelers for boomerang buyers. That is not the point of contention. The point of contention is the pronouncement that it will be "a hopeful piece, about redemption and recovery". How do they know the situation is hopeful and redeeming if they haven't even found the people they're going to talk to yet?
A better analogy would be if you announced that you were going to write a story about how Latino hockey players commit more fouls than white hockey players, except that you hadn't actually done any research yet to ascertain whether that was even true.
Get it yet?
