Navigating the News

Figures

Figure 0.1: Arizona gubernatorial candidate David Garcia is interviewed by reporters at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix.

Figure 1.1: San Francisco Chronicle news editors meeting.

Figure 2.1: View of the BBC newsroom in the Broadcasting House, London.

Figure 3.1: Reporters and camera personnel from KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas recording an interview.

Figure 4.1: Officers with the Los Angeles Police Department establish position outside of a crime scene.

Figure 5.1: High School instructor Ivan Miller participates in the University of Oregon’s Journalistic Learning Initiative.

Figure 6.1: U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke takes a reporter’s question at a press conference

Figure 6.2: Infographic: Discretionary spending funds a wide range of government programs

Figure 6.3: Infographic: Share of $4T of spending in 2017 and total nominal spending growth by 2027

Figure 7.1: U.S. President Barack Obama and King Abdullah II of Jordan make statements to the press before meeting in the Oval Office.

Figure 8.1: San Jose Mercury News reporter Mark Purdy participates in press conference with golfer Tiger Woods.

Figure 9.1: Press photographers at For Noise music festival, Pully, Switzerland.

Figure 10.1: A crew from KPBS-TV in San Diego interviews Andy Yuen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the finished South San Diego Bay Coastal Restoration & Enhancement Project.

Figure 11.1: PBS NewsHour producer Nsikan Akpan interviews Oliver Steeds, director of the Nekton mission deep ocean exploration project.

Figure 12.1: Reuters News Service reporter Chuck Abbott reviews a United States Department of Agriculture Survey.

Figure 12.2: Front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, November 12, 1978.

Figure 13.1: First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon addresses journalists about Brexit at Bute House in Edinburgh.

Figure 14.1: Slimane Hadj Brahim of Al Jazeera covers war devastation in Lebanon.

Figure 15.1: Senator Eduardo Amorim of Brazil is interviewed by journalists Debora Brito and Adriano Kakazu.

Figure 16.1: Anti-Japanese demonstrations in front of Japanese embassy in Beijing, China.

Figure 17.1: Journalist Arthur Sikopo interviews community members in rural Kaoma in Western Zambia.

Figure 18.1: Reporters and photographers prepare to cover a political rally for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, thanks to my co-authors for their contributions to this project. While some are faculty colleagues at San Jose State University and/or longtime academic associates, some had never met me before agreeing to write chapters for this book. I applaud their efforts in stepping up to write about their assorted areas of specialty or interest. In particular, I’d like to thank Michael Longinow, Frank Russell and Nisha Garud Patkar for connecting me with outstanding fellow journalists and academics to strengthen the project.

I’d also like to salute the numerous journalists who agreed to be interviewed for the book by myself and my co-authors, and who stuck with the project in spite of some last-minute hassles. Given the political climate at the time interviews were being conducted, it was extremely difficult to get many journalists to talk. Some agreed to be interviewed but were then forbidden to do so by their employers’ legal teams. This made those who stuck with the project especially appreciated. Their shared insight, knowledge and wisdom give this book much of its authority.

Additionally, I’d like to thank Raechel Price for her indispensable contributions in getting this book from the interview stage to the finished product. Her help in transcribing interviews, analyzing chapters and helping to edit material was instrumental in getting the book to completion, and her intelligence and experience as a journalist provided a much-needed independent point of view.

I should apologize to the staff of the Spartan Daily for my somewhat divided attention as their faculty advisor over a couple of semesters while putting in so ←xiii | xiv→many hours on this book. In particular, huge thanks to Mike Corpos, the Daily production chief and my trusted colleague, for picking up the slack and keeping everything running as smoothly could possibly be expected of a student news organization.

Introduction

What Is News in the Digital Age?

richard craig

San Jose State University

It washes over us, seemingly all day every day. We live in the Digital Age, or the Information Age, or the Computer Age (heaven forbid there’s a Power OutAge …). Smart phones are omnipresent, flat screen TVs are in all kinds of public spaces, computers seem to be everywhere, and they’re all transmitting impossibly vast amounts of information, entertainment, images, sound, video and such. But for those seeking to stay informed about current events amidst this tsunami of stuff, what qualifies as actual news? What information can be trusted?

The term “fake news” has gained currency in recent years, first referring to material made up or greatly exaggerated by individuals and websites to generate viewer traffic, and more recently applied by politicians and other public figures to reports they disagree with or media outlets they don’t like. To confuse the two—with one created specifically to deceive, while the other simply containing unflattering information—is massively upsetting to those who gather news for a living.

“I would say one of the more damaging phenomena has been this notion of ‘fake news’,” says Devin Fehely, an award-winning local television reporter. “We often hear it as a jab … Any reporting with which you disagree, any set of facts with which you disagree, anything that doesn’t neatly conform to your worldview sometimes has been unfortunately put under the umbrella of fake news. And sometimes I think people say it with a nod and a wink, but I think that this notion is much more pernicious and much more corrosive. Because when there is real and consequential reporting on something, there’s going to be a segment of the population that is going to be resistant to whatever that new information is.”

Of course there are vocal critics of this, and in today’s polarized political environment, it seems like everyone is accusing everyone else of bias or dishonesty or ←2 | 3→favoritism. Add social media to the mix and it can seem like our entire society is screaming at each other.