20050106
a complete story
washington post staffer philip kennicott writes in his jan. 5 essay, "from a distance, hope glimmers like a mirage amid the misery," that the continuous barrage of images, soundbytes and 60-word updates from the tsunami affected areas do nothing to help or solve growing problems there, or solve problems already there before the disaster.
mr. kennicott does not address the bigger aftershocks resulting from the disaster. not about the stinginess of governments or the two-facedness of god, but the short reach of global media, succumbing to the easier stories to tell.
story after story of the same. there are patterns enough to be gleaned: how has government corruption installed before the tsunami affect distribution of aid? international relations? environmental impact? how have small towns functioned in relation to the big cities previous to the event, and are they still connected now?
maybe journalists aren't digging deep enough - these stories have been told, we just missed the 30-minute segment, or the special sunday section. there are stories of parents losing faith, there was at least one father who no longer can bring himself to face mecca and chant.
"there is nothing! there is nothing! where is god? what is god?" cried a man in front of an american student of divinity.
broadcast media, whose reach and immediacy should equal responsibility, hasn't jumped on the why issue quick enough unlike after sept. 11, 2001. mr. kennicott laments habit after habit of the same - take CNN, for instance. they installed monina rajpal and richard quest to anchor and cover the immediate aftermath. and then they sent their notables, christiane amanpour, aaron brown, anderson cooper, to asia, with paula zahn remaining in the studio to staff the fort, as if this well-known team will give legitimacy to the news previously reported by less exposed journalists.
i sympathize. with CNN.
the realm of the big question(s) belongs not to journalism, realm of the pithy soundbyte. it belongs to the worlds of literature, philosophy, theology. perhaps mr. kennicott implies that it's about time daily journalism raise the big questions, the way documentaries and hour-long features did shortly after sept. 11, 2001, and devote energy to explore the questions' roots.
however, there seems to be no way around it - mr. kennicott and the rest of us should brace ourselves that the best angles and representations surface only after one story after another has been told. personally, i still insist on the reporter's challenge to tell the story fairly and completely, and at a mere three minutes a piece; at a mere 500 words a story. the world is hurried and crowded. someone will always make us stop and look around. that's what the features, editorials; the documentaries and specials are for. further, that's what literature, philosophy and theology are for.
perhaps bringing in prime fresh faces closer to the disaster will hasten relief. i think mountains are moved because of the subtle nudges of the nightly news, we just never recognize them. mr. kennicott is right - hope is a mirage. especially if those with the reach to point to it fail to rouse the leaders and groups responsible for realizing it.
---
From a Distance, Hope Glimmers Like a Mirage Amid the Misery
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Jan. 5, 2005
We've entered the moment of insipidity. No matter what may be happening on the other side of the globe, where hundreds of thousands are dead and injured, millions homeless and whole regions in shambles, the narrative arc of the stories Americans expect requires hope. So even before the real actors in this faraway drama have felt the full burden of despair, journalists have moved on to inspiring tales of survival, affirmation that life is returning and that healing proceeds apace.
There's some small evidence of this: a lucky survival story here and there, a few instances of people finding relatives they thought surely were lost. And, of course, it's in the nature of being human to get on with life.
So the network superstars have arrived in the stricken areas, as if only by being there can they dig out the essential feel-good stories that allow Americans to reassert faith in a benign God and order and meaningfulness in the world. The print media are there, too, searching for the same scraps of redemption, but without the sentimentalizing touch of the television camera, the tone of familiarity, the relentless, oozing empathy of first-person celebrity journalism. [ more ]
---
regarding the two arts.
Journalism versus Literature?
By Nick Joaquin
Posted: April 30, 2004, in two parts.
Inquirer News Service
The following speech was delivered in August 1996 by Joaquin, then the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. - Inquirer News Service.
... My journalistic writing developed in me an understanding of writing in general. You know, actors say there are no small parts, there are only small performers. So I say: There are no hack-writing jobs, there are only hack writers. If you look down on your material, if you despise it, then you'll do a hack job.
But journalism trained me never, never to feel superior to whatever I was reporting, and always, always to respect an assignment, whether it was a basketball game, or a political campaign, or a fashion show, or a murder case, or a movie-star interview. As J.D. Salinger admonished (but this ain't a verbatim quote), I was always shining for the fat housewife in the third row.
I remember this young poet scandalized by this article I did on Nora Aunor. Wrote this young poet: "Nick Joaquin is writing about Nora Aunor! Nick Joaquin has become a bakya writer!" But that article lives as one of the best essays on Miss Aunor because she was not bakya to me and I did not go bakya on her.
So that was the first vital thing I learned in journalism: that every report must be done as if you were reporting on the parting of the Red Sea, or the Battle of Pinaglabanan, or the splitting of the atom.
Good reportage is telling it as it is but at the same time telling it new, telling it surprising, telling it significant. The good reporter should become so absorbed in the story that he becomes invisible in it and the story seems to be telling itself.
That is the basis of an old, old maxim: Trust the tale, not the teller.
I can claim in the Quijano de Manila reportage, you don't see Quijano de Manila at all. You see only the actual characters involved in the event that's being reported. So, as you read, that event is not just something being related to you but something happening right before your eyes. ...
The so-called creative writer tends to be too subjective, too obsessed with himself. That's why I think every aspiring young writer should spend some years as a news reporter, so he will be obliged to step out of his own private world and to experience the world outside.
This will not only train him to be observant and objective, it may also save him from eccentricity, the danger that faces every creative writer. The newsman has to report the who, what, when, where, why, and how as clearly as possible so that even people on the run can read him.
The newsman cannot afford to be eccentric.
Eccentricity is such a temptation to the creative writer because he tends to be self-indulgent. In the Philippines especially, where so few read him, he may be tempted to indulge in his fancies and foibles. He feels under no obligation to communicate clearly because he know that his readers are mostly his own fellow writers and that he can play games with them.
But what journalism demands is responsible writing. The reporter is duty-bound to communicate-and to communicate as sensibly as possible. He must not play games with the reading public: Communication is serious business.
But too many creative writers believe that, if communication is the business of journalism, literature is different, because the business of literature is expression-or, to be more specific, self-expression. And here the responsibility is only to oneself.That egotism is the kind of sickness that a tenure in journalism can very effectively cure.
On the other hand, the journalist is also sick who believes that he does not have to write well to produce good reportage, who actually thinks a graceful style is out of place in journalism. But if the responsibility of the writer is to communicate as clearly and sensibly as possible, then he must have a good command of expression as any creative writer.
A newsman who is careless with his grammar is being as irresponsible as a newsman who is careless with his facts. And a reporter who cannot tell a news story coherently cannot be justified by the speed and enterprise with which he got the scoop.
If the creative writer needs more training in responsible communication, the news writer needs more training in fine expression, even self-expression - especially today in the Philippines, when the news writers cannot even get the gender of their pronouns right.
[ Continued - part 1 ]
[ Continued - part 2 ] ¶ 1/06/2005 01:22:00 AM
mr. kennicott does not address the bigger aftershocks resulting from the disaster. not about the stinginess of governments or the two-facedness of god, but the short reach of global media, succumbing to the easier stories to tell.
story after story of the same. there are patterns enough to be gleaned: how has government corruption installed before the tsunami affect distribution of aid? international relations? environmental impact? how have small towns functioned in relation to the big cities previous to the event, and are they still connected now?
Disaster also forces the skeptical mind to question God's existence, and yet the media -- supposedly so skeptical -- do a virtuoso dance around the problem of God and His mercy. There are complicated theological ways around this problem, this dilemma of two Gods, one who wields earthquakes and waves like Zeus throwing thunderbolts, the other filled with compassion and alert to the power of prayer. While the media will occasionally raise the issue of doubt -- or how religious leaders deal with doubt -- they revert quickly, effortlessly, to an endorsement of orthodoxy. It is easier to report on people praying (the visuals are better) than it is to write about doubt. And doubt makes people angry. It shakes faith at a time when faith is under stress.
maybe journalists aren't digging deep enough - these stories have been told, we just missed the 30-minute segment, or the special sunday section. there are stories of parents losing faith, there was at least one father who no longer can bring himself to face mecca and chant.
"there is nothing! there is nothing! where is god? what is god?" cried a man in front of an american student of divinity.
broadcast media, whose reach and immediacy should equal responsibility, hasn't jumped on the why issue quick enough unlike after sept. 11, 2001. mr. kennicott laments habit after habit of the same - take CNN, for instance. they installed monina rajpal and richard quest to anchor and cover the immediate aftermath. and then they sent their notables, christiane amanpour, aaron brown, anderson cooper, to asia, with paula zahn remaining in the studio to staff the fort, as if this well-known team will give legitimacy to the news previously reported by less exposed journalists.
i sympathize. with CNN.
the realm of the big question(s) belongs not to journalism, realm of the pithy soundbyte. it belongs to the worlds of literature, philosophy, theology. perhaps mr. kennicott implies that it's about time daily journalism raise the big questions, the way documentaries and hour-long features did shortly after sept. 11, 2001, and devote energy to explore the questions' roots.
however, there seems to be no way around it - mr. kennicott and the rest of us should brace ourselves that the best angles and representations surface only after one story after another has been told. personally, i still insist on the reporter's challenge to tell the story fairly and completely, and at a mere three minutes a piece; at a mere 500 words a story. the world is hurried and crowded. someone will always make us stop and look around. that's what the features, editorials; the documentaries and specials are for. further, that's what literature, philosophy and theology are for.
Images of destruction inspire an intolerable sense of futility in those far from the catastrophe. The obvious response -- to send aid -- is adequate only to prevent further suffering. About the suffering that has already happened, the losses that can't be undone, we can do nothing. Except watch for a time, until we're numb, or bored, or angry at the repetitive misery -- and then, in the back of the head, cue those violins, the sunset mood, the irrational affirmation that allows us to ring down the curtain.
To ring down the curtain on the story, not on the actual suffering.
perhaps bringing in prime fresh faces closer to the disaster will hasten relief. i think mountains are moved because of the subtle nudges of the nightly news, we just never recognize them. mr. kennicott is right - hope is a mirage. especially if those with the reach to point to it fail to rouse the leaders and groups responsible for realizing it.
---
From a Distance, Hope Glimmers Like a Mirage Amid the Misery
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Jan. 5, 2005
We've entered the moment of insipidity. No matter what may be happening on the other side of the globe, where hundreds of thousands are dead and injured, millions homeless and whole regions in shambles, the narrative arc of the stories Americans expect requires hope. So even before the real actors in this faraway drama have felt the full burden of despair, journalists have moved on to inspiring tales of survival, affirmation that life is returning and that healing proceeds apace.
There's some small evidence of this: a lucky survival story here and there, a few instances of people finding relatives they thought surely were lost. And, of course, it's in the nature of being human to get on with life.
So the network superstars have arrived in the stricken areas, as if only by being there can they dig out the essential feel-good stories that allow Americans to reassert faith in a benign God and order and meaningfulness in the world. The print media are there, too, searching for the same scraps of redemption, but without the sentimentalizing touch of the television camera, the tone of familiarity, the relentless, oozing empathy of first-person celebrity journalism. [ more ]
---
regarding the two arts.
Journalism versus Literature?
By Nick Joaquin
Posted: April 30, 2004, in two parts.
Inquirer News Service
The following speech was delivered in August 1996 by Joaquin, then the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. - Inquirer News Service.
... My journalistic writing developed in me an understanding of writing in general. You know, actors say there are no small parts, there are only small performers. So I say: There are no hack-writing jobs, there are only hack writers. If you look down on your material, if you despise it, then you'll do a hack job.
But journalism trained me never, never to feel superior to whatever I was reporting, and always, always to respect an assignment, whether it was a basketball game, or a political campaign, or a fashion show, or a murder case, or a movie-star interview. As J.D. Salinger admonished (but this ain't a verbatim quote), I was always shining for the fat housewife in the third row.
I remember this young poet scandalized by this article I did on Nora Aunor. Wrote this young poet: "Nick Joaquin is writing about Nora Aunor! Nick Joaquin has become a bakya writer!" But that article lives as one of the best essays on Miss Aunor because she was not bakya to me and I did not go bakya on her.
So that was the first vital thing I learned in journalism: that every report must be done as if you were reporting on the parting of the Red Sea, or the Battle of Pinaglabanan, or the splitting of the atom.
Good reportage is telling it as it is but at the same time telling it new, telling it surprising, telling it significant. The good reporter should become so absorbed in the story that he becomes invisible in it and the story seems to be telling itself.
That is the basis of an old, old maxim: Trust the tale, not the teller.
I can claim in the Quijano de Manila reportage, you don't see Quijano de Manila at all. You see only the actual characters involved in the event that's being reported. So, as you read, that event is not just something being related to you but something happening right before your eyes. ...
The so-called creative writer tends to be too subjective, too obsessed with himself. That's why I think every aspiring young writer should spend some years as a news reporter, so he will be obliged to step out of his own private world and to experience the world outside.
This will not only train him to be observant and objective, it may also save him from eccentricity, the danger that faces every creative writer. The newsman has to report the who, what, when, where, why, and how as clearly as possible so that even people on the run can read him.
The newsman cannot afford to be eccentric.
Eccentricity is such a temptation to the creative writer because he tends to be self-indulgent. In the Philippines especially, where so few read him, he may be tempted to indulge in his fancies and foibles. He feels under no obligation to communicate clearly because he know that his readers are mostly his own fellow writers and that he can play games with them.
But what journalism demands is responsible writing. The reporter is duty-bound to communicate-and to communicate as sensibly as possible. He must not play games with the reading public: Communication is serious business.
But too many creative writers believe that, if communication is the business of journalism, literature is different, because the business of literature is expression-or, to be more specific, self-expression. And here the responsibility is only to oneself.That egotism is the kind of sickness that a tenure in journalism can very effectively cure.
On the other hand, the journalist is also sick who believes that he does not have to write well to produce good reportage, who actually thinks a graceful style is out of place in journalism. But if the responsibility of the writer is to communicate as clearly and sensibly as possible, then he must have a good command of expression as any creative writer.
A newsman who is careless with his grammar is being as irresponsible as a newsman who is careless with his facts. And a reporter who cannot tell a news story coherently cannot be justified by the speed and enterprise with which he got the scoop.
If the creative writer needs more training in responsible communication, the news writer needs more training in fine expression, even self-expression - especially today in the Philippines, when the news writers cannot even get the gender of their pronouns right.
[ Continued - part 1 ]
[ Continued - part 2 ] ¶ 1/06/2005 01:22:00 AM
