The following is a list of 7 habits that I believe the best journalism demonstrates, and good journalists develop. These are not 'personal qualities' that "cannot be taught": those that promote this view of journalism are, I believe, either demonstrating arrogance in saying so, or laziness in failing to see that these qualities can, and are, taught around the world outside of journalism education.
The first 4 habits relate primarily to newsgathering: they are qualities that help journalists to see stories where others do not, to collect the information required, and treat it appropriately.
The other 3 habits relate more to the communication of the resulting stories: ensuring that the right story is told in the most effective way, or ways.
You may disagree with this list, or have other qualities that you think need adding. I'd love to hear those.
"Don't say you want to see the world and then complain if you're sent to Djibouti."
One of the greatest appeals of journalism - the fact that you might be reporting on one thing today and a completely different thing tomorrow - is also sometimes the source of students' most common complaint: that a subject is not interesting.
The complaint is a symptom of bad habits: a symptom, specifically, of a lack of curiosity.
Good journalism starts with curiosity: a desire to learn about the world, to ask questions about how it works. It is also a result of an attempt to imagine what the results might be.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Why is good journalism a result of curiosity? (Well done if you were asking that question: it shows you're already developing good habits!)
You can classify journalism into two categories: stories that react to events; and stories that proactively reveal or shine a spotlight on things that we need to know.
The second category of stories has its seed in curiosity: proactive journalism cannot exist without curiosity; it begins with a question: "What happens to sportspeople after they retire?"; "What is the council spending its money on?"; "Why don't we have a cure for cancer?"
But reactive reporting would also be much poorer if we were not curious, too.
Take a standard story: a car crash. This might begin with a statement from the local police force that a car crashed on a particular road at 11.15pm and the driver has been arrested.
An incurious reporter might simply publish those facts, and nothing else. There is a term for this process: churnalism: journalism which adds nothing, questions nothing, and merely republishes the information that has been provided from one source.
A curious reporter, however, would want to know more:
- What type of car was it?
- How did it crash? Did it leave the road, was it a collision with another car, or with some other obstacle?
- Why did it crash? Did the driver fall asleep? Were they distracted? Were they under the influence of alcohol or another substance? Was it someone else's fault? A problem with the road?
- Who was in the car? Was it just the driver?
- Was anybody else involved, either as participants or witnesses?
- Is the driver hurt? Anyone else?
- What has the driver been arrested for?
- Have they been charged? Released? When will the police need to decide one way or another?
- Is it rare or common for crashes to happen on this road?
- Where on the road did it take place?
You will notice that many of these questions fall into the '5 Ws and a H' often discussed in journalism:
- What?
- Who?
- Where?
- When?
- Why?
- How?
In fact the '5 Ws and a H' is a method to develop a habit of curiosity. Journalists starting out in their careers will list these questions and try to answer them in their reporting. More experienced journalists might do so without thinking: it has become a habit.
But there are other methods too: consider the role of imagination in the process above. The police have provided very little information, but we are already imagining parts of the story as a result. We might, for example, be already imagining that the driver was drunk. Why? Because the police have arrested the driver: we assume (imagine) that this means they believe that the driver has broken a law. Furthermore, we imagine that the most likely law in this context is going to be the one regarding drunk driving.
Reading such clues is useful, and important: it helps triggers the questions we might ask - but it can also be dangerous, and limiting. Not because imagination is bad, but because of a failure of imagination.
Consider the following other explanations for why the driver has been arrested:
- He was under the influence of drugs, not drink
- He wasn't wearing a seatbelt
- The car wasn't fit for the road
- He assaulted officers
- He was wanted for another, unrelated, crime
Here's another failure of imagination: the bullet points above have all used the word 'he'. Where did police say that this person was a man? Nowhere.
The more information provided, the more that our imagination will have to work with - but also the more limited. A particular make of car might lead us to make more assumptions about the events. What if the car was a black Porsche? A brown family saloon? A pink Volkswagen Beetle? A white VW Golf?
Curiosity and imagination help us to start asking questions - but there's a further habit we need to develop when listening to the answers...
When reporting a news event, do we only report what people tell us? What if two different sources say contrasting things?
Scepticism is important in journalism because it moves us from merely repeating what people have said, to establishing the factual basis for that information. It has become particularly important in a modern information age when most public bodies can communicate with the public directly, without that accountability.
If curiosity is where journalists act as the eyes and ears of the audience, scepticism is where we act as the mouth: it is the way in which we give a voice to an audience which isn't able to ask questions itself.
Scepticism is also another example of the journalist exercising their imagination: the sceptical journalist must always ask "But what if this information is not true?" - what if?
It is important to distinguish this from cynicism: the cynic assumes that they are being lied to; it is another failure of imagination, a failure to imagine that they are not being lied to. It is just as lazy as being credulous, where the person fails to imagine the opposite: that they are not being told the truth.
The sceptic, by contrast, is comfortable with the uncertainty of not knowing whether something is true or false. It is a difficult position for the journalist to occupy, because uncertainty is not welcomed in the newsroom or in the news report: we deal with facts.
How, then, does the newsroom handle uncertainty? Mainly with attribution: "police said"; "the MP for Rochdale said"; "a witness said". With no time to establish the veracity of these accounts, and a deadline looming, we can only report what was said, not what happened.
This is an important distinction to make, and one that trainee journalists learn: do not report what someone has said as fact, if you cannot establish it yourself. Establishing facts is not an exact science: in the example above the report might say that 'A man has been arrested following a crash on Chester Road' even though they have not observed the crash themselves, or seen the man in question. They would do so because they have no reason to believe the police would mislead them over such an innocuous event.
However, when dealing with other parts of the story, particularly those which may be subject to some debate in future, they might be more cautious: 'Police say the vehicle was travelling at over 50mph when it collided with another vehicle'. How do they know the vehicle was travelling that fast, or that it collided?
Scepticism allows us to make these decisions, but on its own it is not enough for great journalism: we must be able to pursue the facts that will allow us to better establish what the facts actually are; to move from 'not knowing' to 'knowing'. And that requires persistence.
One of the earliest skills that broadcast journalists learn is how to conduct a vox pop. Short for vox populi (voice of the people) the vox pop is an attempt to 'take the pulse' of the public on a topical issue: the journalist will take up a position in a busy public place and ask passers-by to share their pearls of wisdom on the issue of the day.
The results will typically be used at the end of a news package (not, it should be pointed out, on their own), particularly when the news story in question doesn't have many other interviews or visuals to draw on. Most are quickly forgotten (the exception, perhaps the best known example of the form, is Brenda from Bristol's reaction to the announcement of the 2017 snap general election: "You're joking - not ANOTHER ONE!")
Try it yourself: stand on a street corner with a microphone and an audio recorder, and ask people if they are prepared to be interviewed about a topical issue.
Most will refuse.
And this is the point. Failure is part of journalism. When you try to speak to people, many will refuse to speak to you, or ignore you entirely, and it is helpful to accept this from the start, and to see it for what it is: it is not failure; it is part of the job. Put another way, most of the time our job is not to get a response from everyone, but to find the people who are willing to speak.
I start with vox pops because we seem to find it easier to accept failure when trying to grab passers-by than we do when cold-calling or approaching potential interviewees - but the principle is the same. And once you have developed a bit of a hard skin from doing vox pops, you may find it easier to be rejected or ignored when chasing more specific sources.
The difference, of course, is that when we're chasing interviewees failure is harder to deal with: we can't just pick anyone off the street: we need that organisation to respond to accusations being levelled at it; or someone who has experienced this issue to share their personal experience; or a real expert to help readers (and us) to understand the 'why' or 'how' something is happening.
Failure is also harder to recognise. Yes, we might be told 'no' outright, but our calls and emails might more often be simply ignored, or the person may promise to respond, but continually delay doing so. In these cases we also need the wisdom to recognise that we are failing, and to deal with that.
When it comes to finding a source willing to speak, we have two ways of dealing with failure:
- Find an alternative source, or:
- Find an alternative approach
Finding alternative sources can include some creative lateral thinking (creativity being one of the other habits, explored below): how can you find other experts? Case studies? Other people whose response is relevant?
A Reuters guide to Covering Trump the Reuters Way makes this advice explicit, in the context of an uncooperative White House:
"If one door to information closes, open another one. Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources. Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us."
In some cases, however, we don't have that choice, and we need to be more persistent with one source. This means being prepared to be a little bit annoying - remember it's not our job to be everyone's friend, and most sources will understand (and even respect) that it is our job not to give up easily when a response is important.
James B. Stewart explains this in his book Follow The Story:
"Our natural tendency is not to be rude and, once rebuffed, to stop trying. But I myself have often found myself talking to reporters I had hoped to avoid, simply to get them to stop calling. Persistence is effective." (Stewart 1998 p98)
It is, of course, not always appropriate or ethical to be persistent. This is where alternative approaches involving empathy (see below) can be useful.
Beyond persistence with sources, persistence can also be a virtue in reporting on a particular story - or, more broadly, the issue that a series of stories touches on.
In 2016, for example, BuzzFeed reported on a cottage industry of over 100 pro-Trump fake news websites "being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Craig Silverman and Lawrence Alexander wrote in the report:
"The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters."
And that, it seemed, was that. A great story - important, surprising, and revealing. A job well done. Now, what's next?
But the reporters weren't done. Two years later, they returned to the story (with new partners) to reveal there was more to it than first appeared:
"[A]fter reviewing social media posts, government records, domain registry information, and archived versions of fake news sites, as well as interviewing key players, BuzzFeed News, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia can now reveal that Veles’ political news industry was not started spontaneously by apolitical teens.
"Rather, it was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov — who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day."
Here is another example of persistence in practice: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Drone Warfare project has been tracking US drone strikes for over 5 years. Its core methodology, as I wrote previously, is persistence:
"Bureau reporters monitor news reports, press releases and documents and over time have turned those 'free text' reports into a structured dataset that can be analysed, searched, and queried. That data — complemented by interviews with sources — has been used by NGOs and the Bureau has submitted written evidence to the UK’s Defence Committee."
It was persistence that came to mind for Private Eye's Ian Hislop, when asked to define investigative journalism by a UK inquiry panel looking into the future of investigative journalism. He replied that it was "in part ... saying the same true thing again and again and again and again until the penny drops. It is not just that Private Eye runs a story, its influence comes from repeating it over and over again."
Like all of these qualities, persistence is something that can be learned. This Freakonomics podcast sees the psychologist Angela Duckworth explain how.
Empathy is the ability to imagine what it is like to be in someone else's shoes. It is perhaps one of the more underrated qualities of good journalists, perhaps because people often confuse it with sympathy.
The difference between the two is important: it is possible to think about what it is like to be a particular person (empathy), including criminals and corrupt officials, without feeling sorry for them (sympathy).
For example, an official may have given contracts to people she knew because she was worried about losing their friendship, or it was easier than going through a longer external process, or because she feared for her job and was hoping it might help her get employment if she lost it. These are all motivations we can understand, but we can still see that the resulting actions are immoral and unjustified.
Why do we need empathy as a journalist? Firstly, it helps us dig deeper into a story. Identifying the motivations involved in an event - part of the 'why' of a story - can help us better report it. If there is a systemic problem it helps identify what human dynamics that system needs to account for. If there is a human impact it helps us to explore and report that.
In other words, empathy is one aspect of scepticism: without empathy it can be easy for the journalist to revert to stereotype. The 'welfare cheat' and the 'corrupt politician', the 'illegal immigrant' and the 'fatcat boss', the 'apathetic youth' and the 'racist pensioner', the 'criminal' and the 'victim' are all cliches that we can push beyond with just a little empathy-based scepticism.
Secondly, empathy can help us identify the best ways to approach sources, and to deal with them afterwards. Sources are likely to harbour at least some suspicion about your motives in approaching them - based, no doubt, on another cliche: the morality-free reporter who will twist what you say to fit a story that's already written in his mind. So how do we address that suspicion?
Empathy helps us to identify what those suspicions might be: the 'victim' is likely to have very different feelings about speaking to a journalist as the 'criminal'; academic experts may be operating in a different environment to police officers. Here is an example of empathising with each:
- A 'victim' might be worried about repercussions from the person or organisation he or she is a victim of, or concerned about increased media attention and the impact on his or her family
- A 'criminal' might be worried about being judged, or fear repercussions from others involved
- An academic expert might be too busy hitting a conference deadline or buried in end-of-term marking, or might receive dozens of enquiries every week, and does not see journalistic approaches as a priority. Or they might think journalists typically have only a superficial understanding of the issue and will make mistakes when trying to report it
- A police officer might have to refer all press enquiries to the press office, or have concerns about legal issues such as contempt
Many of these obstacles can be addressed by demonstrating in our approach that it is based on curiosity, not a prejudiced opinion. That we are seeking to understand what actually happened, and why.
Empathy might involve understanding that many people are not aware of the distinction between opinion (where judgement is often passed) and news reporting (where it is not) - and that we might need to explain that. We might equally need to explain that it is not our role to act as their advocate. We might explain our duty to provide a right of reply, or to give a voice to the voiceless, or to ask the 'why' questions relating to newsworthy events.
Other obstacles might be addressed by demonstrating our legal or field-specific knowledge, or our commitment to reporting on a particular field. We might point to previous work, or mutual contacts who have dealt with us in the past and can vouch for our integrity.
Finally, empathy can help us in finding individuals and information in the first place. If I was a twin and I was writing about my experiences online, what phrase would I use that non-twins would not? Answer: "My twin". If someone wants to hide information when might they do that? After they've been approached? So I might use a service which alerts me to changes on specific webpages, or differences between pages saved before and then downloaded again after the approach. If I was really in a particular place at a particular time what should I be able to describe that wasn't in reports? Perhaps the weather (which you can then research ahead of any meeting, ready to use as part of some verification processes).
Now that these have been listed, it is important to remember how each works in tension with the other:
A good journalist is curious, but not credulous: their scepticism helps prevent this. But scepticism should be distinguished from cynicism: a sceptical journalist develops the habit of persistence in establishing whether something is true or not. Persistence needs to be tempered by empathy: there is a world of difference between the journalist who exploits the vulnerability of sources, and the journalist who understands how best to ethically encourage a source's cooperation.
Equally, the creative reporter should not be indulgent with respect to that creativity; they need discipline to employ that creativity towards a journalistic objective, ensuring that their story is clear, coherent and appropriate to the target audience. But discipline does not mean rigidity: a modern journalist needs the adaptability to realise when the story they had in mind has changed, or that it needs to be told in a different way.
Stewart, James B. (1998) Follow The Story