Editor’s Note: The alert WORDster will remember way back to yesterday, when we heard from Mrs. Florence Richmond and Mrs. H. Heynemann of the Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association (Click here). The discussion continues today.
Expert Rebuttal
“Mrs. Heynemann took the floor and proceeded to refer to journalistic indiscretions in the way of advertising divorce proceedings and revelations of crime. She concluded by reading from a number of newspaper clippings headlines which she regarded as injurious to the young.
“John D. Jury, who had studied the question under consideration in a newspaper office, plunged in and saved the press. Jury effected general rescue by explaining that it is only the dramatic and the picturesque that constitutes news, news being a departure from the ordinary. He drew attention to the fact that a newspaper cannot consistently run a list every morning of the married people who are continuing to live in harmony, as it is hardly a news item. Also, it would serve no purpose to mention the names of those people who had thoughtfully refrained from killing anybody the previous day.”“And further it would be quite futile to print the news by enumerating those cities not yet destroyed by flood or fire, the presidents who have not been assassinated and the kings who have not gone mad.
“Having thus illumined the subject, Jury withdrew before the general expression of feminine point of view, which occurred later under the stimulus of Russian tea and a desire to reform the world.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 1910.
Editor’s Note: Snotty Know-it-all.
Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo: Spring Reflections
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Might we assume the writer was male and, perhaps, Mr. Jury himself? While we might applaud his having, single-handedly(!), "saved the press," might we not also suspect a bit of both journalistic and masculine bias on his part? 'Twould have been fascinating and more accurate -- not to mention less patronizing, smug, and one-sided -- to have the "feminine point of view" explicated more clearly in the article. A pity Mr. Jury withdrew, no doubt so convinced of his own rightness that he saw no point in listening to the opinions of others.
ReplyDeleteModern journalists haven't learned much.
How far away from correct is Mr. Jury? I agree it would have been better if he would have stayed to discuss and hear a different point of view. To me his comment makes sense. The world most of the time is corrupt so unfortunatly our news is mainly made up of divorce, murder, and the like. The stories of the good and upright people is a welcomed change of pace, but is usually not the status quo.
ReplyDeleteIf "the world most of the time is corrupt," then wouldn't the news -- the out-of-the-ordinary -- be more along the lines of people doing right? I know the answer: Doing right is neither "dramatic" nor "picturesque," in Mr. Jury's words.
ReplyDeleteTo me, this "either/or" kind of thinking is the problem. The best example I can come up with quickly is how the news media generally covers elections, especially major elections. During this past presidential election, there were 13 (!) qualifying candidates in Florida. I don't think any major news outlet even did a roundup on all the candidates, much less do any in-depth pieces. Yet many of these candidates were definitely out of the ordinary and "picturesque."
How well was the public served by omitting this coverage? Did we really need yet another biased analysis of yet another biased poll that purported to predict the "either/or" future? Does such "coverage" become, in fact, self-fulfilling prophecy? Does the news media doom us to its own ill-informed, and therefore ill-formed, conclusions?
If you are interested in seeing my take on the 13, go to http://justthewritetouch-info.blogspot.com/2008/10/all-13-presidential-candidates-on.html
No time to keep up that particular blog, but I think you'll see a couple of examples there of the kind of reporting I think most media outlets miss.