Reading between the lines

Yes, we leave stuff out

An unpublished letter to the editor this week accused The Spectator of leaving out important facts in an opinion piece.

In a personal note to the writer, I replied that was a reality in most arguments, and always has been, but also that there is only so much space on an op-ed page. Indeed, many letters to the editor and opinion pieces are rejected simply because they are too long. (That said, articles online are sometimes longer than those in print.)

Finally, I said, we are fortunate enough to live in a world where information is available to most of us at our fingertips. Our op-ed readers, especially, are particularly well-informed.

Still, such criticism always stings. What do reporters and columnists choose to include in a story, and what do they choose to leave out? It matters.

Most enduring politicians know that short, to-the-point quotes and sound bites are more likely to land them in the news than long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness campaign speechifying. We also know complicated scientific data is not as easy to transmit to the general public as one shocking fact. Or that fear, anger, tension and tears always play well no matter what the medium.

To better illustrate this point, I’ll share with you two comments I often get:

1. “I spoke to your reporter for half an hour and they used only one quote near the bottom!”

2. “I spoke to your reporter for 30 seconds and my quote is the headline!”

Meanwhile, we are often criticized for including material readers say is irrelevant, or for committing the increasingly modern journalistic crime of false equivalency, which goes something like this: Why bother doing a “he-says-she-says” piece if what he says is so obviously false, irrelevant or already thoroughly debunked?

Such criticisms are increasingly common in climate change and LRT debates, to cite only two examples.

I am a believer in fairness and balance, and acknowledging all sides of an argument, but it is getting ever more complicated in a modern world where much of the population is consumed by social media, where many people are inundated with “information” from every corner, and too many seem bent on criticizing so-called mainstream media organizations, in a manner that usually goes something like this:

“Why did you even quote that idiot? You are just giving him credibility he doesn’t deserve.” Or, alternatively, this: “Where was the quote from the real expert? She’s conspicuous by her absence.”

So how do we cover such issues? Well, we do our best in the circumstances. We try to reach those who are available within tight deadlines, we try to quote those who are understandable, we try to be fair and we strive for balance.

(It’s also important to remember that reporters have often included information that was removed by editors simply for reasons of space.)

As journalists, we like to remind ourselves that what we do is a first draft of history, and it’s true, but that usually doesn’t fly with readers. They don’t care about history; they care about now.

Sometimes, in retrospect, it looks as if we did a terrible job; sometimes it looks pretty darned good.