Chile is a story about journalism’s failure (updated)
Posted by Jeremy on October 13, 2010 · 32 Comments
Jay Rosen, as usual, beat me to the punch with his thoughts this morning on the Chile mine story. This is why I tweet more than I blog; sometimes you just say it and fill in the gaps later. I did a bit of mini-ranting last night, at least. Anyhow, :
A big story and a great story, but does 1300 journalists covering the Chilean miners have anything to do with reality?
I’ve been mulling this post for a few days and have wrestled with the cadence. I don’t do the curmudgeon thing very well, but this story has me feeling really, really cranky.
The is a wonderful news story about perserverence, ingenuity, working together, and triumph. That is what most of the world is seeing, and I know a lot of us have been hoping for a safe rescue. But this story depresses me.
I see a story about journalism. To know that 1300 journalists have descended on this mining town to cover a worldwide story is a little disconcerting in an era of closed foreign bureaus and budget cutbacks. Many might question that thought given the intense interest in the story; my Twitter and Facebook feeds were lit up last night as the first miner descended ascended up the 2000-foot shaft. But the public doesn’t think in terms of resources when it consumes journalism; it only has what it has in front of it.
Thirteen-hundred journalists – imagine what we could do with that. Journalism organizations are pouring resources into this as if it is the Baby Jessica 1980s and ’90s, with fatter newsrooms and no Internet. Really, does every major TV news network in the U.S. need a camera crew and reporters out there? In an era of satellite feeds and citizens on the ground who can pipe in material, does the U.S. media have to parachute in on a story like this?
Foreign stories are worth covering, but let’s be honest that this is more a human interest story with a small impact on a large population than something such as the earthquake that occurred in that same country of Chile just eight months ago. The proportion of response to story impact is perhaps the best illustration of the insanity we seen in media business choices today.
The choice to shuttle all these resources to Chile does have an impact on what we cover at home. My former Mizzou colleague posted a heart-wrenching story earlier this week about poverty in Philadelphia in the wake of the Great Recession. Heart-wrenching because of the details, but more so because this kind of thing isn’t on our radar everyday. Poor people don’t buy newspapers. Significant resources go to cover whatever shiny object the American consumption class will chase these days. The Chile miners story, while interesting and heart-warming, is really just the flavor of the week, another form of reality TV in the eyes of the business executives making the call of what resources to spend where.
The actual story has zero effect on people in the U.S. with real problems; it’s a wonderful distraction, which would be fine if it was distracting us from coverage of bigger problems at home. But that’s not the reality of this reality TV news story.
Cover it, but let’s keep some perspective here.
The biggest problem here is there is not really a need to devote so many resources to this because of the wonderful advances we have made in technology. I have barely tuned in to the coverage on my TV or online. I have my Twitter feed; I knew when the first miner emerged at roughly the same time everyone else did. We have Chilean journalists – both professional and citizen – who are already embedded in that community and region who can cover it well. It’s not our story. Perhaps the biggies like the NYT should be there, but is it necessary to send anyone else? Do the news networks – cable or otherwise – really need their own camera crew and on-the-ground reporters for this?
The public sees a great story, and that’s fine. It really is. But on the media side, I see an industry chasing hits and page views by wasting valuable economic and human capital. Let’s cheer for the miners, but let’s not forget that there is suffering here at home and it should get the same, if not more, resource allocation.
Will we band together and help out the poor and downtrodden here, or is this Chile story really just a welcome break from our routine of ignoring those suffering among us? Journalism has a part to play in how we answer this question.
Update at 4:05 EDT on 10/14: Apparently the criticism is more than theoretical. Check out this news story from the NYT about how the coverage will constrain budgets for coverage of other things at the BBC. Hope those one-day page views was worth it! Thanks to for the tip.
After spending some time thinking about this, I think it comes back to the same thing a lot of stuff comes back to: presentation. The “hard news” that so many orgs despair about being able to fund like local politics, police, labor, etc. is just not written about correctly in American newspapers these days. Some magazines are doing a better job. The Atlantic for instance. But the daily paper that many Americans still do read (in some format) is not putting things in such a way that people are compelled to care. If you’re middle class and only want to read about iPads, what’s going to make you care about the poverty in your city’s slums or the horrible schools there? Your neighborhood is just great and your kids go to a good school. What’s going to make you care about the plight of people you never see, never meet, never encounter in any way until they are billed as being a drain on your tax dollars?
These days, the obsession is with finding a business model. I’m afraid this too sometimes sends us in the wrong direction. A business model needs money coming from somewhere and, again, money comes from the people who can afford to spend it on the advertisers you service. But the problem isn’t just the business model: http://www.annatarkov.com/the-problem-with-journalism-is-not-only-the-b
Jeremy,
Thank you for venting what anyone who cares about all that’s being left unsaid feel.
Action item: how do we grow journalists to see this and become so angry, they consistently commit to the pursuit of compelling stories, content, ideas, that make this sort of gluttony impossible to feed?
Human-interest stories have always exerted a special fascination on Americans. I remember when I first moved to the US how surprised (not in a good way) I was by the number of insignificant local stories in the news, especially on TV. This was in the late 1990s. The situation has become more pronounced now because of the crisis faced by media outlets, who are tempted to pander to their audience, but the way human-interest stories overshadow more important ones is not new.
(I am reminded of the hoopla surrounding the attempted rescue of miners in W.Va. – the Sago Mine Disaster of January 2006 – and the face of Anderson Cooper when he was told live by a local resident that only one miner had survived, instead of all of them as had been believed. Also, have you ever watched “The Big Carnival”, a 1951 movie with Kirk Douglas? The media frenzy has a way to “blow up” in people’s faces. I’m glad it didn’t this time, though.)
Journalists do worry their competitors will be dispatched on the ground. No TV station has an incentive not to send someone and appear “left behind”. It is a vicious circle in the quest for relevance. The question becomes, can journalists use the current interest in the miners to also educate their audience on issues such as the quality of life in Chile, the aftermath of the earthquake, the living conditions of blue-collar families? What I find the most annoying is that many people don’t seem to care about the big picture – they want to be uplifted by a feel-good story, and they’ll take whichever comes their way. You could argue that the journalists are not really sent to cover the amazing survival and rescue of 33 brave men, but instead to satisfy the gluttonous appetite of the media for happy endings. There is an “exploitation” side of it that is quite nauseating.
It was a fanastic story of humanity, but 1300 journalists? That’s all about the marketing … you know, the promos that refer to ‘our man in Chile’ … And it’s in and out. Nothing complex, nothing lasting too long … ‘Firefighter’ journalism.
Will they be around to investigate mine safety, the environmental impact of mining in Chile, the long-term health and employment ramifications for the men and their families? I think not. On to the next big thing.
This is a cute observation. I for one was in my study when the news broke on my twitter feed. I followed the news on twitter even though I had my cable tv on and tuned to CNN. (I live in Nigeria).
But my tv is in the room and I was in the study, very busy with work on my blog and other sites. I’d already been following the news on other channels like my NYT and yahoo news feeds. So I knew that the operation had an almost 100% chance of success. So, why would I get up and walk to my room when I could just continue my work in my study and follow the news through tweets? In the end, I retweeted a couple of the tweets and had a few interesting conversations along the way.
I think the point is — and I absolutely agree with you — sending 1300 journalists to Chile to cover the news, in this new era was absolutely unnecessary, and a waste of precious resources.
Touche, totally true, yes, yes, yes! I was thinking a similar thing. Most of my life has been in feature writing and mostly regional. For a few weeks I worked on a national radio program that chased news stories. There I was trying to find the one person who hadn’t been interviewed in Gulf spill disaster and on and on. Sure, that was a real story, but it’s that “ants to a picnic” mentality that I found really depressing. Now the picnic is gone and so are the ants. You just don’t need all those journalists in one spot. You need them at home, doing the proactive stuff (along with some reactive, of course).
I agree with you that parachuting in 1,300 journalists to cover this story appears to be a waste of journalistic resources. But, at the same time, I have a problem blaming the news orgs. While most people reading this blog probably consume news through RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook, I would venture to guess that a large portion, if not a majority, of Americans don’t. And while the idea of sharing resources to cover international stories like this one make sense on paper, and in the context of the conversation we’re having in the journalism world, we have to remember that these news orgs are still competing for eyeballs. If every news org used the same news footage, anchor and print correspondent, there would be no reason to watch one station over another, or visit one newspaper’s website over another. I don’t think news orgs want to lose their identity like that, especially when a story like this attracts the interest of the entire world.
Sure the coverage was overkill, over the top, and consumed way more resources than needed, but at least it was a positive story, a miraculous one really, that engaged not just Americans but people and media around the world. It was a legitimate and compelling human interest story. I get more upset when news media resources and coverage descend on meaningless bad news stories involving celebrity gaffs and missteps, whether it’s it’s Lindsay Lohan falling off the wagon again, Tiger Woods cheating on his wife or Bristol Palin and the Situation on Dancing with the Stars.
Interesting. I had a completely different take on the coverage until I read this. I wasn’t thinking about how many reporters were on the ground at all. I first heard about the accident when it happened via NPR radio. I never once picked up a newspaper to follow the story, I don’t have television and I don’t follow twitter for news either. So when I heard (on the radio) that the rescue was beginning I felt at a loss that I might not actually get to see any aspect of how it was being done. It had become such a topic of discussion, even in my daughter’s grade school class, that I was beginning to feel out of the loop. However, late yesterday I found that the UK’s Telegraph had live stream video of the entire process (great quality) and a live blog that was updated every 90 seconds. See what remains of it here: http://tinyurl.com/34fcqdx. So instead of wondering how many reporters from the US had converged upon Chile, I was excited to see real time, good quality reporting online. I thought it was a really great example of the new age of journalism and what is to be expected of up and coming journalists as our profession adapts to technology. This post, however, leads me to wonder just how many of its own reporters the Telegraph had on the ground in Chile to provide such coverage. Did they use fewer, more or the same number of resources than their American counterparts?
Neither was I much thinking of whether the “story” mattered to me when I went looking for a way to tune in. I just wanted to be able to join a conversation should it come up. But since watching the live feed, I’ve found several friends discussing what’s wrong with mining in our own country, and if Chile can rescue 100% of its miners, could we have done the same. Now a smart news editor would take this story and turn inward to focus on our own mining industry, quickly before the interest of Americans fade. That would have more news value.
As for the question as to why no one seemed to care about Lene Johansen’s “Heart Wrenching” story about poverty in Philly…well there was poverty when I lived there, I saw it in the soup kitchens where I volunteered, I saw it in the faces of the children I cared for while their parents took time to deal with their own HIV status, I passed it everyday on the street. So, although I haven’t read the article yet, my heart is not particularly wrenching over the idea of this story either, mainly because it sounds like nothing new to me. And unless you’re proposing some type of viable action, I don’t want to read about how much harder it surely is now in the current economy to survive in Philadelphia. No offense, it’s just that If I still lived in Philadelphia, I’d probably still be out there volunteering to do what I could. One thing I agree with is that news should cover issues that matter at home, but more so, news is personal – people will still only read about what makes a difference to them in their own lives. And poverty in Philadelphia no longer holds personal relevance for me in the same way stories about building Tent Cities in Tampa does.
When I was a regional editor for a publication, I took note of these big circus-type media stories and always found a way to capitalize on it at home with something that mattered in the small speck of Florida’s GulfCoast where our publication’s reader’s lived.
And, just because 1300 US reporters were on the ground, doesn’t mean we’re listening does it? In the end I didn’t get my news from any one of their American news outlets. But, I still found the news I wanted. In this digital era, there is something worth thinking about there.
Human-interest news and celebrity news have been crowding out hard news and investigative pieces for years. The result is an unrelenting dumbing down of the American population. We bounce from crisis to crisis — earthquakes, mine collapses, oil spills, mass murders, teen suicides — without hardly ever looking back to see what we’ve learned.
It seems to me that there’s more US coverage of the Chile miners than the West Virginia coal mine explosion that took place earlier this year and killed 25 men. Seems a bit out of whack, don’t you think?
Sadly, journalism is also a business and thus can’t entirely act on integrity and sound watchdog decision-making anymore. It has to cover the stories the eyeballs want covered in order to pay the bills. It’s not entirely journalism’s fault. They’re just trying to survive.
Here’s a good case study, though, that would give huge insight into your complaints. The Los Angeles TImes appears to have a reporter in Chile. Recently, the L.A. Times also did a huge service to a relatively poor city in LA County, Bell, which had almost every member of the city government accepting ludricous salaries in what was called “corruption on steroids.” The Los Angeles Times exposed it while reporting an investigative piece.
From a financial standpoint, both in print and online, I wonder what storyline has done better and been more popular in Los Angeles–the story on the miner rescue in another country, or a story on a poor city getting abused by the power of its leaders right in L.A.’s own backyard?
Nope. I have to disagree. What, do you want to use N. Korea’s reporter as the pool reporter? Each of us has our own news source we prefer and we like to get the scoop from it.
I think it’s a GOOD sign that even in budget cutbacks, bureaus get it together for amazing times. Well, a billion people watching can’t be wrong.
I have written for several magazines and newspapers. Yes, we’d all like more work, but I never expected to be sent to Chile. I’m glad for the other reporters who were.
1300 journalists seems like a big number, but like everything else in journalism, really inflated. The media loves to report that xxx number of credentials were given out at a big event. But it is a little misleading. The fact is live TV production requires a lot of people. The have engineers. Sound people. Producers. Cameramen. Assistant producers. On-air talent. So a each big network will send like 10-20 people. CNN probably more. So the guy driving the Sat truck is considered a journalist? There is a lot of support people. They have to man the operation 24/7. Make food runs, refuel generators, pitch big tents, light up the area. So maybe divide the 1300 by 20 and you get maybe 75 real journalists. Add a bunch of photographers/writers/radio guys. I just read that TV is the only media that had increased ad sales in the past year. And most of that was from live programming that can’t be DVR’d. No surprise that TV covered this event and had the funds to do it.
While I agree that there are too many journalists covering the story, I disagree with the following:
“The actual story has zero effect on people in the U.S. with real problems; it’s a wonderful distraction, which would be fine if it was distracting us from coverage of bigger problems at home. But that’s not the reality of this reality TV news story.”
If you go outside the U.S, you’ll notice that world newspapers cover international stories more comprehensively. That doesn’t happen here in the States. News organizations need to realize that there are better stories and bigger issues than we have at home.
So you hitched a ride on the Chile story, too, Jeremy. Making it 1301. And where you see a failure of journalism, I see the reality of … the economics of journalism. People don’t care enough to support all those foreign bureaus … that churn out info most people apparently aren’t interested in. But this is one story people all over the world were interested in. Who could not be interested in what those miners and their families were facing? The new reality is that journalists will go wherever they have to for a good story. But there’s no money to keep people in place all over the world just in case a story might happen nearby.
I fully agree with Francis Specker. Putting a signal on air requires a lot of people, the talent on the screen or microphone is just the tip of the iceberg. I am Chilean and I live in Chile, so I can tell you that perhaps there were too many people at the San José Mine, but, on the other hand it was (and still is) a story worth of covering for different reasons. It is a remarkable story from a human and technical point of view that, at least for us in Chile, sets a breakthrough, before and after San José. It has been perhaps one of the biggest challenges of this type faced by our authorities and engineers (of course with a little help from overseas). I hate over-exposed real life dramas on radio/tv/printed press, but this time it is perhaps justified. Many people, mostly professionals from all walks of life, are learning a hard lesson from this event that will make our mining industry a better work site in the future and for journalism it has also been a great professional experience; remember, San José is amid the desert, no water, no electricity, no utilities at all!! so inventiveness was a must in that place. Also, you cannot deny the human drama behind each miner, at least in Chile, miners usually have a very poor background, lives surrounded by poverty and that was evidenced in all the newscasts, so it was also a showcase to show REAL LIFE to the world.
“The actual story has zero effect on people in the U.S. with real problems; it’s a wonderful distraction, which would be fine if it was distracting us from coverage of bigger problems at home. But that’s not the reality of this reality TV news story”
So American journalists should only report what directly affects Americans? Can you see why the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) considers Americans to be insular and self-absorbed?
You’re all claiming that it’s journalists who tell people what the news is, what they ought to be interested in. But in reality it’s the other way round – readers tell journalists what they’re interested in. Demand dictates supply even more than supply dictates demand. It’s unsurprising that people all over the world were glued to their TV screens watching the Chilean miners story unfold. What’s surprising is that Jeremy Littau finds it extraordinary that anyone should care.
Never underestimate the ability of journalists — and most business people for that matter — to act in lockstep if they think their competition is getting something they ought to have, too.
I understand that no one in the media wants to be left behind and it is a better story than the celebrity poop from which there seems no escape, but . . . there were definitely some missed opportunities in covering the rescue. So much of what went into the rescue effort came from advancements in the fields of medicine and space exploration. And although there was occassional reference to these two scientific fields, the opportunity to “show and tell” was lost. Instead we are still hearing about the mistress of one of the miners! For anyone who wonders about the dumbing down of America, this is a good example.
NASA team members were consultants in the rescue operation so there is a connection with the U.S.
Creo que el problema es que no están valorando las características comunicacionales del evento. No es casual que un rescate similar haya quedado en Radio Days de Woody Allen o la clásica Big Carnival. No todo se mide por impacto cercano en las audiencias, hay noticias que conectan a las personas a través de las latitudes. La operación de rescate San Lorenzo como toda la situación de la mina San Esteban tenía todos los ingredientes para ser lo que fue una gran Noticia informativo global. Editores de muchos buenos medios lo entendieron.