Friday, January 20, 2006

Re: Writing for Money

Thank you for sharing that story, Matt. I really enjoyed it.

I believe that this sort of thing has been going on in one form or another as long as there have been journalists. Savvy PR people know exactly how to get their stories with the proper spin placed with sympathetic journalists. Most of the time they don't have to spend cash to do it. Reporters need stories, interviews, exclusive information, and quotes. Publicists can "spend" access and information on journalists to get what they need in front of the public.

The thing about it is, reporters do it too. My latest encounter with this was about three years ago when I had a project in the Central Valley here in California. I was monitoring the construction of a large water pipeline in an area known to have many buried archaeological sites. If we saw evidence of buried deposits in the excavated trench we had authority to stop work to assess them. One day the excavator hit human remains several feet below the surface: a prehistoric burial and the residue of several cremations. We stopped work immediately. The protocol under California law required me to call the County Coroner to inform him of the find, no matter if we knew the remains were prehistoric or not - these eventually proved to be more than 4000 years old.

About two hours after my call to the Coroner, a TV news reporter and cameraman showed up at the work site. And we were in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was obvious that the TV station had a "friend" in the Coroner's office, paid to tip them to anything that happened. The reporter was not very happy when I escorted him off the site with no video, no interview and no information after that long drive. I had my client's interests to protect and the Native American monitor who was working with me was in no mood to see his ancestors' remains on the evening news.

My relations with media journalists have been few, but almost all have been of very poor quality. As long as I'm on a roll here, I'll tell another horror story. Years ago, I managed an archaeological excavation project under contract to a government agency in a certain western state. An employee of that government agency, not the person I was directly working for, but one senior enough that I couldn't turn him away, showed up at my site one day with a psychic in tow.

He wanted the psychic to take "readings" on the site and on artifacts we had recovered. It was a very embarrassing situation. I didn't particularly want them around, but he was my customer and I couldn't tell him no. My crew was scandalized. But I went along with it. After work that day, I brought several artifacts with me to a meeting with the psychic. He would hold one in his hand, squeeze his eyes shut tight, and either start asking leading questions ("Was this found to the left of something?") or uttering meaningless "readings" ("I see cottonwood trees!") It was obvious the guy was a total fraud.

The next day, the psychic came out to the site and walked over part of the unexcavated area. He placed four or five stakes in the ground and made very specific predictions about what we would find at each spot: a stone fireplace, the grave of a person who died of small pox, etc. After doing that, he left with his government friend and I was relieved to have them out of my hair. Of course when we excavated under his stakes we found absolutely nothing that remotely resembled what he had predicted. I figured that was over and done with and I had heard the last of it.

Wrong. About two months after we returned from the field, one of my co-workers (who had been at the site) came into my office with a horrified look on his face carrying a newspaper. Sure enough, in a major regional paper was a half-page, by-lined article, complete with picture of our psychic, describing how he had visited my site and successfully predicted the location of every artifact and feature that I found. It was amazing.

The reporter had done what a good reporter does - completely swallow a free juicy story with no background research, no fact-checking and no attempt at a third party verification of the events. She was indignant when I called her and told her of her mistake. Who was I and how was I in any position to know about it? It was probably just a difference of opinion between me and the psychic. I had placed the locations of the psychic's predictions on the site map and offered to meet with her (and the psychic if she wanted) so she could see how far off he was. She refused to meet me and stopped taking my calls. Her editor wouldn't take my calls. I had to make do with a letter to the editor that they grudgingly printed after editing all the meat out of it. Live and learn.

So Matt, don't worry about being cynical. Remember what Lily Tomlin said, "I get more and more cynical every day, but it's never enough to keep up."

3 comments:

Mary Strachan Scriver said...

Great Lily Tomlin quote!

When I was doing Animal Control PR, a young woman was murdered. The reporter was also a young woman and her whole article about the consequences of the murder centered on the dead woman's cat and how the cat was devastated by grief -- would not leave the woman's bed in case she might come back. Etc. I spoke to the reporter about this fantasy (no doubt Cat had been sleeping on that bed for years and believed it was HER bed) and the reporter told me her editor ORDERED her to find some human interest angle like that and the hell with the facts. It seems innocent, but the result is often maudlin, misdirected and counter-productive.

Prairie Mary

Matt Mullenix said...

Ditto on the Tomlin quote--I love it.

Another quote that's somewhat comforting to me but probably shouldn't be: "News is anything they don't want you to print. Everything else is publicity."

That's a lot of publicity!

I'm comforted because (to date) I've avoided swallowing the fantasy that I write any "news." Certainly some of it is designed to look like news and to be consumed by a mercenary, lower tier of news agency. But for facts these things contain mainly talking points. If some of the points are "fact-esque" (as recognized by The Daily Show), it only serves to firm up the illusion.

I suppose if there is going to be any honor in this work, it will come from keeping it confined to a kind of craftsmanship; imagining it like contracted cabinet work, although it's probably more akin to that sticky-back veneer you can apply yourself.

Steve Bodio said...

Steve here, introducing Libby. Myself?-- fiction writers are supposed to tell tales, reporters the truth. But almost NEVER has anyone I have known ben quoted correctly. Here is Lib on some of her experiences:

"Several years ago, while working at Patagonia Mail Order in Bozeman, I had a very nasty experience with an eager reporter who published an article quoting us incorrectly and misrepresenting the company's position AFTER being told beforehand that she was wrong. A few Montana wool growers (that's what they called themselves) had approached Patagonia about using their "predator friendly wool" in our products. We listened to their plans and told them that we lliked the concept but realized that the scope of their group's project was far too limited for us to become involved in any way (there were only about 5 ranchers involved), and that they should not be looking at Patagonia as an end market for their wool. We told them this in so many words, and thought we had seen the last of them. a week or so later I got a call from a reporter who said she was writing an article about the "Predator Friendly Wool group" and wanted to check a few things with me. the head of the PFW group had told her that Patagonia was considering buying their wool for its products and had given them support. I told her that this was not the case -- we had no connection with them whatsoever, nor did we plan to, and that she shold not mention us in the article she was writing. I got to work one morning and was told that our phone lines were being tied up by people protesting "the article." I got a paper, and there in the article was printed exactly what I had told the reporter was not true and asked her to leave out. I called her up and she told me that one of the woolgrowers had told her that we were going to be involved...even after I had told both him and her that we were not. I was furious -- we had over 300 calls about it (mostly from traditional ranchers ) many of them unpleasant, all because this wanna-be reporter had made it all up. I told her that if she wanted to write fiction she should go ahead and do it, but not call herself a reporter.