I was just reading an article on FACEBOOK and rather than vent with a long status post there I decided to blog about it. It has been a minute since I posted a blog old anyways.
What ever happened to investigative news reporting? I remember when as a child we would get the morning newspaper on Wednesdays in school and we had to do a short write up on a piece of paper identifying the who, what, when, where, why, and how (if applicable) for the news article we selected. It could be a little silly article it still had details.
They can't be giving children an assignment like that anymore because half the news reports answer one question, then the next day you get a few more details, and if it is a juicy article you may end up finding out more as the days progress. If the event loses its steam a full report answering the basic questions becomes non-existent.
News reporters I imagine get paid pretty hefty money. Some of that money news outlets spend needs to be dedicated towards developing better investigative reporters.
The leads for most articles of the day seem to be coming from the public. The best video coverage, footage, and interviews seem to be coming from the unknown.
Is it because the celebrity newscasters got spoiled? It seems as the upswing of doing all the research and investigation from sitting behind a keyboard has desensitized news reporters on what is really happening in the world.
I would imagine news reporters and news outlets have enough people in different places around the world where they could really be on top of investigative reporting. Every city just about I am sure has a news station. I think it would benefit these news conglomerates more to use their technology resources to network and have a field person in each locality as needed to report on events happening around the world.
I haven't read it in print but I think the way the Walter Scott as a victim of police gone wild was a travesty. The incident report was a laugh. I recall there used to be a time when the news reports on a case that big they would go out to the scene and try and reenact what happened. They didn't go just based on what they could pull up on the Internet because there was no Internet to that magnitude.
For heaven's sake if they even start soliciting private and public individuals to provide better and more conclusive reporting everyone can trust will be a step up from where they have come to. Really get back out in the field. Don't keep relying on the friend network and you scratch my back and I scratch yours way of doing things. Show a little more smarts than that and go back to hiring smart people rather than people based on popularity.
Don't get me wrong, popularity is important however it is more important to keep a news product that people can rely on and trust. I think it is totally sad that so many news outlet had to recant their reporting because the Incident Report provided by the police officer was totally bogus.
No one has said it but we saw it in Ferguson the media is the cause of some of the mayhem. If the police can get to them and get them to side with them based on their authentication solely as police officers why wouldn't police officers feel they can get away with so much?
The news media needs to be impartial. Go back to only reporting what they can verify. And the most important part of all is to actually verify it and get the who, what, when, where, why and when applicable the "how" of it all.
This is Lynne Ruffin and I am reporting from some random thoughts. More to come when another random thought that I feel like venting about rather than holding it in comes across my mind. Unless I can pick up a position of investigative reporting then I will be out in the field trying to get the meat and bones of the situations.
I'm out. Hey I don't get paid to write, so maybe my post doesn't take that into account either.
