Communication 273
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Memo to the class:
This is what they were: 1. Conflict, 2. Characters, 3. Consequence & Context, 4. Audience, 5. Action & Turning Points, 6. Description, 7. Language. You'll note that conflict heads the list, while action, description and language bring up the rear. I asked a student what she thought of this. "Just right," she said. "I couldn't disagree more," I replied. This took her aback. What's wrong with it? she asked, and in a few words I tried to tell her. I'd like to expand that answer in this note to you, because the role of conflict is often asserted without much reflection as one of the essential elements in news stories. Here's an example. We happened to have a former Mercury News editor over for dinner that night, and I told her about the conversation in Berkeley. She, too, was taken aback. Conflict, she said, is central to all storytelling. Period. End of conversation. I addressed myself to the stove, where a Sole Piccata, with butter, lemon juice, capers and white wine was slowly turning into hash. So what's wrong with conflict, anyway. I would begin by saying that in many cases there's not only nothing wrong with conflict but that it's the main story. What's going on in Afghanistan and with the related events at home? We're confronted not with one conflict but with many: between religions and cultures, between forces on a battlefield, between factions within a country, between the requirements of security and the protections of civil liberties. These do not begin to exhaust the list of conflicts. But the fact that the big story of the moment is about conflict does not make or even strengthen the case that every story needs conflict, that conflict is the chief priority when we think of framing stories (and language is dead last) and that stories without conflict are not stories at all. If conflicts are all you're focused on, you won't do the equally important stories about what lies behind them. I remember an article in the Mercury News about the governor's record on civil rights. The subhed of the story read, "Both sides angered by middle-of-the-road approach." The lede said, that "when it comes to civil rights, his moderation seems to be alienating people -- in a potent reminder of just how vexing those issues remain." This was a long piece. I counted 28 paragraphs. Up high, a law professor was quoted as saying that while Gray Davis is clearly committed to civil rights, he's cautious in implementing those ideas. Half way through the story, someone said Davis showed great courage in following through on his gay rights legislation but his veto of the racial profiling bill was a slap in the face to minorities. Another source said it wasn't that Davis didn't understand civil rights. What he wants is a workable solution, not just a feel-good one. And even further along in the piece, someone said that Gray Davis might even save the Democrats from themselves. His go-slow approach could protect the party from a conservative backlash if too much liberal legislation was enacted. All together in the 28 graphs, there were only three quotes critical of Davis. There were five quotes praising him. Three quotes were neutral. This story was classically framed in terms of conflict. You've read hundreds like it. Rather than being about a civil rights record that offers something to many interested parties, the story was written to imply that it's a record that has infuriated everybody. Here is the embattled governor under attack. He's besieged from left and right as he stands there in the middle of the road. Never mind that only three people had anything harsh to say about him, while five thought he was doing a good job. I looked at some basic journalism textbooks, and every one of them talks about conflict as one of the fundamental elements of news -- that is, something that's necessary for a situation to be newsworthy. Here's Melvin Mencher, author of probably the preeminent text used in reporting classes. Strife, antagonism and confrontation have provided stories since people drew pictures of the hunt on the walls of their caves. The struggles of people with themselves and their gods are the essentials of drama. The contemporary counterparts are visible to the journalist whose eye is trained to see the dramatic -- an official who must decide whether a proposed highway should go through the homes of a dozen families… Although critics of the press condemn what they consider to be an overemphasis on conflict, the advance of civilization can be seen as an adventure in conflict and turmoil. I'll let you decide whether the Mercury News story depicted an adventure in conflict or an advance of civilization. And I certainly would not tell you that conflict should not be an important element in news. What I want us to think about is the easy or even automatic practice of framing issues as conflict. I've been reading Deborah Tannen's book, "The Argument Culture." The book, she says, "is about a pervasive warlike atmosphere that makes us approach public dialogue, and just about anything we need to accomplish, as if it were a fight." War metaphors pervade our talk and shape the way we think. The war on cancer, the war on drugs, the battle of the sexes, the turf battles of politicians. Central to the propagation of both the metaphors and the argument culture, of course, are the media. Notice how many stories are framed as fights, as struggles, as conflicts, when in fact, the reality may be something quite as important but considerably less dramatic. Imagine a story about Gray Davis' centrist policies -- a method of governing, by the way, that was the keystone to his campaign. That is, he was promising to be the very kind of governor he has turned out to be. Imagine a piece about how this approach led him to sign some civil rights bills, veto others and how some people think this is realistic and others are disappointed. The public often accuses the press of being negative. Do you think stories like this contribute to that impression? I do. Deborah Tannen writes at considerable length about the argument culture and the press, and she makes the point that this way of looking at news, of framing events in terms of conflict, leads journalists to attempt to provide balance by presenting "both sides of the story." A conflict requires two sides, right? So stories need to reflect that. There are a number of problems with this. Most issues have several sides to them, not just two, and to present them as bipolar distorts reality -- violates Walter Lippmann's mandate to lift the facts out of the darkness and into the light and assemble them into a picture of reality upon which people can act. The American Society of Newspaper Editors recommends that reporters strive for wholeness, not just balance. That's worth taking seriously. Yes, some issues are the most significant at the margins, and we need to weigh our stories carefully. But reality is seldom strictly an either-or, black and white event. The second problem is that there are occasions when the effort to present "balance" creates grotesque distortions. I have seen editors measure their fairness and objectivity by counting the number of column inches devoted to each side of an issue -- so many for the Pro-Life side, so many for the Right-to-Life side. If the inches come out exactly equal, they think they've done their job. Imagine a Holocaust remembrance program at which survivors of Hitler's death camps recount their suffering. Imagine, too, that a group of lunatic protesters appear, proclaiming loudly that there was no Holocaust, that it was all made-up by Jews to justify their opposition to a legitimate German government. You are covering the meeting. Do you give each side exactly the same space? Do the protestors and their claims get equal treatment with the survivors of Dachau? Be thinking about the easy recourse to conflict as a way of presenting stories. Think always about what the story needs to be and how you go about writing or editing it -- to present the most accurate reality that you can. Remember Mr. Lyle's instruction: Just write what happened. What happened may not have been conflict. But it can be a story anyway,
and it's likely to be a truer story than one framed by the argument mentality.
Regards, Bill Woo |