| Let us begin with an honest
admission. Reporting has never been easy. With the ruthlessness of a scavenger, reporters
knock themselves out to bring us the news society thrives on. We rush home to catch the
evening news. In the morning, we yell for the newspaper even before we get to our desk at
the office. Yet, those who lay reputations and life on the line to bring us the news often
go unappreciated. The news-making public treats
reporters like the plague. Indeed, journalists are not popular people. Many a parent
bemoans what curse befell them the day their son or daughter announces he wants to be a
career journalist. And the reason society treats journalists with such contempt is
particularly because of the reporter. The reporter is the face that is equated with
journalism. And true enough, journalism depends on the reporter. Yet, this fellow gets
blamed for all society’s wrongs.
It is much like a certain animal got condemned to fate
among the Jews. The Israelites, the Bible tells us, had a rather bizarre way of dealing
with society’s wrongs. When prophets blasted kings and pedestrians alike for immoral
wrongs and threatened fire and brimstone, the people had an efficient way of dealing with
it. They would take a goat, symbolically heap their sins on it, and offer it up to God as
burnt offering. The English called this the scapegoat.
Society today treats reporters in a similar fashion.
British High Commissioner Edward Clay denies there is a freeze on aid to Kenya, blaming a
Standard report this week on "irresponsible journalism", the Daily Nation wrote
on Thursday. That charge, too frequently cited by the public, goes directly to the
reporter who did the story.
Even on the inside, when a reporter breathlessly crashes at
the editor’s desk flashing "a scoop", often the story is thrown back by an
infuriated editor yelling incompetence, tucked under various terminologies. Whichever way
they turn, reporters find themselves the proverbial scapegoat.
Yet, unlike the biblical scapegoat, our reporters
frequently bring this woe unto themselves. They do so when they forget one crucial element
in journalism – attribution.
The surest way reporters can convince society that they are
merely messengers, the reason they cannot take the flak for unpopular or controversial
stories, is by telling their audience who said what they are reporting. Our newspapers
here largely take this tenet for granted. The few times they remember it, readers cannot
always put a finger on the attributed source.
Take, for instance, the Standard’s "Aid
frozen" story on Wednesday. For the 700-word story that probably caused
Thursday’s presidential crisis meeting with donors, the paper made the crucial
attribution only to "donor sources". It is this lack of concrete attribution
that gives news subjects the leeway to deny stories, as the European Union diplomats
promptly did.
Yet, because of the sensitive nature of the story, this
kind of attribution is professionally accepted. It is only when reporters needlessly omit
attribution in such plain stories as the alleged Obel shooting on Wednesday that pardon is
not so easily obtainable.
"A city matatu driver was fighting for his life at
Kenyatta National Hospital last night after being shot at twice, at point blank range, by
renowned HIV/Aids researcher Arthur Obel on a Nairobi city street," the People Daily,
wrote on Thursday.
There are no two ways about such a sentence – the
reporter has convicted Prof. Obel of the shooting. The absence of an attribution leaves
the reporter with no escape clause, should the case turn out otherwise.
The equivalent Kenya Times story, "Enraged Prof Obel
shoots matatu driver," also starts out with an equally disputable intro, without the
all-important attribution. "Controversial medical researcher Professor Arthur Obel
yesterday caused a stir along a city street when he shot a matatu driver who had allegedly
blocked his Mercedez Benz car," the paper wrote.
In journalism, we attribute what we do not observe or know
to be factual. For decades now, the celebrated author and teacher, Melvin Mencher, has
taught that the further reporters are from direct observation, the more concerned they
should be about the accuracy of their reports. Accurate and comprehensive direct
observation is difficult enough. But only the most foolhardy reporter would stake his or
her reputation on the accuracy of a street witness account. To make clear to the reader
that the report is not based on the reporter’s direct observation of the event, but
on secondhand and third-hand accounts, the reporter attributes the information about the
event to a solid source.
Ok, reporters, particularly novice reporters, get irritated
by the dictum, "Such-and-such happened, TPS – the police said." Yet this
rigid demand, made particularly by the Associated Press, is really for the good of the
reporter’s reputation. Always attribute what you do not see – unless it is
common knowledge – and chances are that you will not wind up the proverbial
scapegoat.
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