Re: Journalistic Cliches 101 "At the end of the day"

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 09:54:59 +0100, Alec McKenzie
<mckenzie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Tony Cooper <tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Ahh, I forgot about radio and television people being considered
>> journalists. I don't think of them as journalists, but I do
>> understand that they claim the title and are accorded the title by
>> most.
>>
>> I consider them newsreaders rather than journalists. There are the
>> talking heads who sit at desks and read from reports provided to them
>> by actual newsseekers, the commentators who provide opinion about what
>> other people do, and the scenery types that stand in front of a
>> location where something newsworthy has taken place and report to us
>> on what they have been told.
>>
>> You are right, though. They are considered journalists even though
>> what they do is a perversion of the meaning of the word.
>
>That might be the situation in Florida, but the BBC newsreaders,
>at least, are in fact journalists. Every word of the news
>reports they read they have written themselves, apart from news
>items that break within a few minutes of their going on air.

I said the American newsreaders read from reports provided to them by
other people. You say the BBC newsreaders write their own copy.

I don't see that it makes all that much difference that they are
writing out the copy that they will read on air. They are not
unearthing any news. They are using reports provided to them by other
people as the basis of what they write. I'm sure most American
newsreaders do the same.

I don't see how a person has legitimate claim to the term "journalist"
if he doesn't do the research or perform the discovery phase of news
reporting. Sitting in a studio in London or New York and compressing
a feed of information about events in New Orleans or Singapore into
seven seconds of dialog is not journalism in my mind.

For that matter, the high-profile roving correspondent that is led to
a site where he stands in front of a burning tank and delivers his
seven seconds of dialog in front of whirring cameras - even if he has
written the words he speaks - is not a true journalist.

In a similar comparison, an editor is not an author when all he does
is rearrange the words of someone else.






--

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
.

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