This week, we launched Impact, our new section devoted to giving back. Thanks to the compassion and generosity of our HuffPost community, it immediately lived up to its name, raising over $28,000 to help the mom who, saddled with medical debt, went blind so her kids wouldn't have to. Click here to help us reach our current goal of raising $30,000. A journalist friend emailed to applaud our readers and express his hope that Impact will help put an end to the misguided notion that reporters are merely passive observers of the world. He reminded me of the story of Kevin Carter, a journalist who took a photo of a starving child struggling in the dirt in Sudan, eyed by a hungry vulture. Carter won a Pulitzer for the shot but, haunted by what he had -- and hadn't -- done, committed suicide soon after. We'll continue to report -- but we'll also help mobilize people and provide the tools to have an Impact on those we write about.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
plime.com : Mom Goes Blind So Her Daughters Can See
Nearly blind woman's world grows darker as the medical bills pile ...
Monique Zimmerman-Stein Chooses to Go Blind to Treat Daughters ...
Mom Goes Blind So Her Daughters Can See (VIDEO)
Newspaper St. Petersburg Times (Florida, USA) : Tuesday's edition ...
I agree, especially in these dangerous times. You can't be passive if your very existence is threatened.
Danny Schechter has taken on the Wall St Crime Scene for years now, and nonstop. He's wondering what we the people can do to express our collective outrage.
Read here: http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2009/10/19/reports-from-inside-the-financial-coup/
Whatever is supposed to be so great about the journalistic knowledge, style, integrity, that I am allegedly getting from all these trained journalists at the better papers (certainly not from the local) is lost on most of us. What many of us see (and the reason we are looking to HP and others) is the (usually undisclosed) conflicts of interest (and when they are disclosed, we rarely even get a "mea culpa," let alone a sincere attempt to correct the situation), sensationalism, black outs on many subjects that the rest of the world knows about, and so on. I was always under the impression that the press was supposed to be the one organization in the country that would honestly say "the emperor has no clothes." Sadly, it has become increasingly obvious to the rest of us that the press has not looked in the mirror for years.
I think Arianna has taken a step in the right direction on many levels.
and you are twisting why that photographer took his own life. he was clearly mentally will with depression. reporters not passive observers. far from it!
you cannot entangle reporters with fundraising. there MUST be a difference and boundaries or they will lose all credibility. how do you choose who is worthy and who is not? how could you handle all the requests and the needs? THAT IS NOT THE ROLE OF JOURNALISM.
there is a type of journalism called public service, but it is not meant to raise money. it calls attention to needs so that those who can fix problems do it!
it MAY but that is handled by professionals who are set up to do that.
huffpost, for all the good it does, is not real journalism, and is lacking in the grounding that underpins real journalistic enterprises.
for example, see this series the washington post is running:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701984.html
Journalists have a greatly exaggerated sense of their worth - too many of them seem to be affected by the filter of money.
A reporter is a journalist. Always has been, always should be. What we need is fewer reporters and editors skewing the news and more reporting. Reporters should not be stenographers, simply going to an event or interview and filing a story about what was said or what happened. The questions must be act to give context and meaning. If a politician tells a lie, it should be pointed out by following the quote with the fact. If a photojournalist comes across a starving child being eyed by a vulture, the journalist needs to document the situation, which, in and of itself, is meant to convey the urgency of a problem and the need to do something. And if there is immediately action needed to be taken to save a life, a journalist must become a human being first and save the life, and report that.
Publishers, like Arianna, and opinion writers are free to be one-sided (if they base opinion on fact) or philanthropical as long as the opinions are labeled as such and the philanthropy is publicly documented. In a society where cable news and 24-hour blogs have deeply muddied the picture, we need to have faith that our journalists are bringing us the truth. But we also need to eschew the idealistic ethics policies that have hamstrung our business by removing the human element.
I would like to see the following point made by more inflential voices:
WHY IS IT THAT COSTS OF WAR ARE NOT RELATED TO THE DEFICIT BUT GETTING MEDICAL CARE TO EACH PERSON AND SAVING LIVES IS? AND WHY DOES
NOBODY AGONIZE OVER 'BAILOUTS' BUT OBSESSIVELY INSIST ON AGONIZING WHEN IT COMES TO DOING THE RIGHT THING AND PROVIDING HEALTH CARE -- A COMPARATIVELY MINISCULE FINANCIAL ENDEAVOR -- AND WASTING TIME?!
The government seems to get no argument from the right when it is policing, fighting fires, going to war, running prisons, worrying about what people do in their bedrooms, or handing out welfare to corporations. In fact, they seem to always want to be adding on to those forces.
to be cont....
The government does education okay, plenty of room for improvement, but it's all right. I have never had a problem with the post office - even if the price of a letter doubled or tripled, they still do a better job than anyone gives them credit for (or what current private companies do). It warns us about hurricanes and tornadoes, keeps an eye on our food supply, funds medical research and gives us easy access to results for that, crime statistics, labor information, the list goes on. Generally, the need for improvement is pretty much directly related to policy and law makers caving to special interests. If things were privatized, that situation would be even worse.
And why is it that Bush and his buddies got to have 8 years to screw up the economy, but Obama wasn't even in office for a few months when he was being blamed for not fixing it?
I would call this activity philanthropic editorializing however.
There is a difference between reporting facts neutrally as journalists are supposed to, and promoting a given outcome based on the stories' circumstances.
I don't mind one side of the story being promoted or favored as long as there is transparency. The problem is that such transparency isn't always there and at times the journalist intentionally hides denies their agenda.
Participating in the event by helping others is not journalism, it is philanthropy, charity, activism - there are many words to describe the noble action of helping a fellow human being. But journalism is not one of those words.
Kevin Carter's sister responded, http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/ultimate_in_unfair.htm : "I am sad that TIME has stooped to such sensationalist reporting concerning my brother's death. (The reporter) did not interview me or my sister or two of Kevin's very close friends. Kevin was a man who grappled deeply with issues most people just accept. In many ways he was ahead of his time. The pain of his mission to open the eyes of the world to so many issues and injustices that tore at his own soul eventually got to him. The Pulitzer Prize certainly didn't send Kevin "deeper into anguish." If anything, it was a confirmation that his work had all been worthwhile."
A Pulitzer photograph and a suicide do not portray Kevin Carter's entire life.
In the spirit of this new venture, I applaud with my donation and my comment. If this is illustrative of a new wave of relevant journalism that tells real stories (not made up fairy tales) that have real impact on real people's lives, this is the hottest and most exciting development to capture the public's imagination.
Let's call the old dying journalism (literally and figuratively) of balloons and Rupert Murdoch the "inane journalism", and this new growing form of interactive, participative, active journalism the "humane journalism". I put my money on where the explosive growth would be. It's an idea and a yearning whose time has come. But pretty soon, you'll see Wall Street getting into the act. Then, watch out!
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I would argue that "humane" and "inane" aren't the best monikers. I would say "activist" and "passive". The difference is that one form pushes agenda and the other reports on that agenda. I would say that activist journalism isn't really what I want to become the mainstream, but you seem activist enough to want only the facts that will make you feel correct.
Seriously, don't tell me Murdoch+Fox don't operate on fiercely partisan activist propaganda agenda. If you think that, you'd need to come up with good rational plausible explanation why Fox executives refused to broadcast President Obama's primetime speech on healthcare to joint session of Congress, broadcast by every other massmedia channel, in favor of showing some inane soapopera.
I stick with distinction between "humane" and "inane". Forinstance, on the war on Iraq, "humane journalism" would report on devastating human consequences of the military+political policies on the longterm human consequences in so many aspects. In same context, "inane journalism" would report on hooplaflash and joystick rush of "shock and awe" on the reptilian brain of intended recipients of the news. Do they both have agendas? Youbet they do! Neither of them are passive. One is designed to elicit empathic understanding and humane response. The other is designed to stimulate the destructive human instinct and elecit reptilian incomprehension of causes and effects of the war, destruction and tragedy --- it's designed to be inane to anesthetize the cerebral brain --- the rational thinking part of the brain.
This is brilliantly explained in AlGore's book "Assualt on Reason"
http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Reason-Al-Gore/dp/B002NPCU30/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255927122&sr=1-1
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If my situation improves, I will definitely give to Arianna's cause as well. That's what life is all about. Being good to one another and helping when we can.
That means no false equivalencies. It means descriptive, rather than sensational, headlines. (Hint)
When I want Op-Ed, I go to those pages.
I don't want them conflated.
My first career was in healthcare and you learn professional detachment to survive. My heart goes out to the photographer described in the blog (and very much to the subject of his photo) - perhaps journalism schools could take a lesson from medicine, as that outcome was indeed tragic. But I have no doubt his photograph inspired many to act - I wish he had lived to know that.
The current state of skepticism about the quality of news reporting will not improve as long as readers believe the reporter has an agenda to promote. If only for this reason, journalists must remain observers/reporters. It is wonderful if their reporting inspires others to good works.
2 Introduce quotes with "said." Avoid charaterization, i.e., "he warned," or "he insisted." Don't be a creative writer; true reporters avoid interpretation UNLESS asked to offer analysis under a byline!
3 A news report will NEVER be 100% objective; try anyway. Be literal: don't write "he noted" unless you saw him write it down; don't mix your conclusions with facts.
4 There are more than 2 sides to every story. There may be 3, 4, or 100. Ask questions.
5 Avoid "off the record" poseurs. Everything is ON the record unless there is a mutual agreement.
The journalist's job is to report accurately. The citizenry responds: maybe rises up and changes the law; maybe yawns and turns the page. Democracies run on information. In a coup, the first step is to capture the communications center.
Anyone can sound off on the radio, cable TV, or the Internet. But that doesn't make it journalism.
I am:
Distinguished Alumnus for Journalism
Rowan University