Words on paper
Among the classes I taught at
Humansville High School in the early 70's was one entitled Mass
Media.
The students in the class studied the media in America with the focus on understanding how it impacts our daily lives. We had a test that included many examples of writings from various news sources including print and electronic media.
One unit specifically drew our attention to the ways news can be slanted. They gave two reported accounts of the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968 which had appeared in national weekly news magazines. The comparison was intended to demonstrate how the exact same event can be slanted to accomplish an editorial point of view.
I was attending a night class at SMSU at that time and as I drove to class I had the idea that I could go to the university library and obtain copies of those actual articles so that my students could see the full reports.
I was able to locate the articles, but was unprepared for the surprise I discovered. As I read through one of the articles I discovered what I believed was a discrepancy between the actual report and the reprinting of it in our textbook.
Returning to class the next day, we compared the two and discovered that the editors of our textbook had omitted two sentences from a paragraph in the report from one magazine in order to get it to fit the needs of their comparison. In other words, they had slanted their re-presentation of this news article to full fill their purpose in teaching slanted news reporting!
My desire to find the original articles yielded much more than I had intended. My students and I learned that even text editors can alter documents in order to teach a particular point of view. That lesson took me to original sources many times during the next twenty-five years of my teaching career. I often found slight distortions, but never so great as in that original experience.
During the time that I reported for The Star I was constantly mindful of how easy it was to slant a news report of the El Dorado Springs City Council or the R-2 Board of Education. Being human I certainly had my point of view and found it critically difficult to refrain from slanting a news report to fit that viewpoint. How is that done by a reporter?
If you use direct quotations you have the power to create a totally different impression to the reader. By quoting some statements by an elected official and omitting others, you may completely alter the appearance of his or her position. Or you can quote only part of a full statement. By omitting some of the stated position you can give an entirely different impression to the reader.
Other techniques can be employed. But the lesson is that just because a report appears in the newspaper, you can not always rely on it for accuracy. "The Power of Writing" appeared in the August 1999 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Joel L. Swerdlow states that "No other invention-perhaps only the wheel comes close-has had a longer and greater impact." He explains that "Much of writing's power comes from its flexibility." Perhaps its greatest power is "its ability to move hearts and minds."
Often Mae would have something that needed to be stated "carefully" in the paper and she would say "Mike, you write this, you're the word man."
I would almost cringe. The word man. That translated to me as an important assignment. As the word man I possessed power. How I put those words together would influence how our readers thought with regard to the subject being written about. The writer in the news media can have a great influence over readers. Swerdlow states that "Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953, was a master of using writing to control people."
If you believe all that is written in the media, if you have never learned to question the printed word, you an be easily controlled by the editorial viewpoint of a publication. That was the reason that I often struggles with the manner by which I reported the public meetings which I attended. I knew that I had the power to cause readers to believe anything that I printed.
In the article in the Geographic Wei Jingsheng, who was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for 18 years simply because he wrote essays arguing for democracy, tells how, after he was given writing materials to compose letters to family members (letters which were never delivered), he "thought about a letter for a week before writing anything. It's something that you must do even if you do not have the leisure of being in prison. To write, you must work methodically, forming your thoughts and prompting other people to think as they read. Writing requires work at both ends. That's what makes it special."
We must form our thoughts carefully and prompt other people to think as they read. Words on paper are special. Words on paper are powerful and require a just person to work at both ends of writing.
(written October, 1999)
The students in the class studied the media in America with the focus on understanding how it impacts our daily lives. We had a test that included many examples of writings from various news sources including print and electronic media.
One unit specifically drew our attention to the ways news can be slanted. They gave two reported accounts of the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968 which had appeared in national weekly news magazines. The comparison was intended to demonstrate how the exact same event can be slanted to accomplish an editorial point of view.
I was attending a night class at SMSU at that time and as I drove to class I had the idea that I could go to the university library and obtain copies of those actual articles so that my students could see the full reports.
I was able to locate the articles, but was unprepared for the surprise I discovered. As I read through one of the articles I discovered what I believed was a discrepancy between the actual report and the reprinting of it in our textbook.
Returning to class the next day, we compared the two and discovered that the editors of our textbook had omitted two sentences from a paragraph in the report from one magazine in order to get it to fit the needs of their comparison. In other words, they had slanted their re-presentation of this news article to full fill their purpose in teaching slanted news reporting!
My desire to find the original articles yielded much more than I had intended. My students and I learned that even text editors can alter documents in order to teach a particular point of view. That lesson took me to original sources many times during the next twenty-five years of my teaching career. I often found slight distortions, but never so great as in that original experience.
During the time that I reported for The Star I was constantly mindful of how easy it was to slant a news report of the El Dorado Springs City Council or the R-2 Board of Education. Being human I certainly had my point of view and found it critically difficult to refrain from slanting a news report to fit that viewpoint. How is that done by a reporter?
If you use direct quotations you have the power to create a totally different impression to the reader. By quoting some statements by an elected official and omitting others, you may completely alter the appearance of his or her position. Or you can quote only part of a full statement. By omitting some of the stated position you can give an entirely different impression to the reader.
Other techniques can be employed. But the lesson is that just because a report appears in the newspaper, you can not always rely on it for accuracy. "The Power of Writing" appeared in the August 1999 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Joel L. Swerdlow states that "No other invention-perhaps only the wheel comes close-has had a longer and greater impact." He explains that "Much of writing's power comes from its flexibility." Perhaps its greatest power is "its ability to move hearts and minds."
Often Mae would have something that needed to be stated "carefully" in the paper and she would say "Mike, you write this, you're the word man."
I would almost cringe. The word man. That translated to me as an important assignment. As the word man I possessed power. How I put those words together would influence how our readers thought with regard to the subject being written about. The writer in the news media can have a great influence over readers. Swerdlow states that "Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953, was a master of using writing to control people."
If you believe all that is written in the media, if you have never learned to question the printed word, you an be easily controlled by the editorial viewpoint of a publication. That was the reason that I often struggles with the manner by which I reported the public meetings which I attended. I knew that I had the power to cause readers to believe anything that I printed.
In the article in the Geographic Wei Jingsheng, who was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for 18 years simply because he wrote essays arguing for democracy, tells how, after he was given writing materials to compose letters to family members (letters which were never delivered), he "thought about a letter for a week before writing anything. It's something that you must do even if you do not have the leisure of being in prison. To write, you must work methodically, forming your thoughts and prompting other people to think as they read. Writing requires work at both ends. That's what makes it special."
We must form our thoughts carefully and prompt other people to think as they read. Words on paper are special. Words on paper are powerful and require a just person to work at both ends of writing.
(written October, 1999)
Posted: Sun - January 29, 2006 at 07:37 AM
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"Chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"Art arises from basic needs-a strong need to express and celebrate our everyday events.
In a museum most people spend less than twenty seconds looking at a work of art."
"Art arises from basic needs-a strong need to express and celebrate our everyday events.
In a museum most people spend less than twenty seconds looking at a work of art."
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Published On: Jan 29, 2006 07:37 AM
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Published On: Jan 29, 2006 07:37 AM