I intentionally stayed away from the teebee news yesterday because I figured it was gonna be all teabaggers, all day. After tuning in to a late Rachel rerun, it proved to have been a wise decision. Missing out on all the *dis-information* wrt the events at Ft. Hood was no great loss……that plan is still in operation today.

“If you can’t get anyone to talk to just look around and write down everything you see. Everything that’s happening, write it down. That’s the story too.”

Recently I gave my class of almost 90 students an assignment that required something like this. The assignment was to go to some public event– the event types that I suggested were a football game, a baseball game, or a church worship service. They were to write from the perspective of knowing absolutely nothing about this type of event. They could interview people (i.e., ask questions), and report what they were told, as long as they were clear about their sources.

What I found was that observational skills vary considerably. Some are wonderful observers, and write lucidly about what they saw. For example, some students “saw” only the players on the field. Others “saw” not just players, but also referees, coaches, line judges, and cheerleaders, writing about the role of each. Some did not pay any attention to the coin toss at the beginning of the game, others wrote about it. Some paid no attention to the fans around them, but one wrote in amazing detail about the people in her immediate vicinity, sorting out who was with who, who lived in the same dorm, and even how they were related to each other, and to football players on the field.

Amazingly, many talked to no one, and did not ask any questions about what they were seeing.

The advice Athenae got sounds simple, but it isn’t. Observational skills can be taught, but some people seem to develop those skills more naturally than others.

Some of the documents discussed here on your blog have many subtleties and nuances. Some of us would not notice many of the things that your trained eyes see, because your graduate training was built on such subtle skills– and perhaps you have a natural gift for such things. But by laying such things out for us to see, you help us see better.

Bob in AZ

I am a big fan of AMC’s Mad Men. This past Sunday’s episode was on the JFK assassination, and I ended up posting a comment on a blog, pointing out how different it was “then” [I was a college student] than “now.”

“Then” [1963] tv was the name of the game for getting immediate information. There was no internet, no cell phones, so people went to tv to get their news.

“Then” there were news folks giving the news. Most of them [e.g., Cronkite, Rather, Jennings] had been field reporters, so they knew what “news” was and should be; they weren’t “readers” like today’s pretty boys and girls.

“Then” there were only the major networks [NBC, ABC, CBS]. There was no Fox, nor any of the other 24-7 spots who both have to fill their air, and choose to fill it with “analysis” — read, bullshit.

As the parent of a journalist, I long for those better days.

Good piece and nice comment. Glennzilla excoriates the MSM’s reporting on this today, too. A Media Orgy of Rumors, Speculation and Falsehoods.

I would suggest there is a difference between covering breaking news, and covering a story that has somewhat matured, and I really don’t mind the somewhat rough edges in early reporting when no one can be clear as to what the story will eventually become. In a sense I like the free-for-all nature of early reporting largely because people haven’t yet had a chance to shape their interpretation to fit the official narrative — or some sort of agenda.

This morning, after some of that shaping had transpired, I was not all that surprised to hear the story re-told in the language of evangelical religion (Morning Joe)– or in NRA speak on CNN. People will, in the wake of something unexplained try to fit it into a comfortable paradigm, and if you listen, you can hear that process moving forward. You can watch the direction in which it is moving.

Late last night I caught part of Anderson Cooper’s program on CNN where he showed in loop after loop the video of the shooter buying something, (maybe coffee) in a convenience store. Something struck me that I never would have considered had I not, last week, read Robert Lacey’s new book, “Inside the Kingdom” which I bought largely because it was well reviewed by Ahmed Rashid and Lawrence Wright. It is a fascinating study of the current cultural/political struggles going on in Saudi Arabia — and elsewhere in the Arab world. Anyhow, at one point in his book, Lacey gets into Throbe Politics. Throbes are the long white robes Arab men wear — shall we say the national uniform. It turns out in recent years those who are Takfeeri (believe in a very exclusive sort of Islam, and that all not aligned with it should be excommunicated at least — sometimes killed as unbelievers) and/or members of the Salafi Movement — (a mass movement of preaching and conversion to strict versions of Islam) — well they have adapted the Throbe to indicate these persuasions. What it involves is shortening the Throbe so that feet and ankles are easily viewed, but shortening it so that the hemline is roughcut and uneven. (Looks like you were drunk while doing alterations.) So what caught my eye (having recently become aware of this aspect of Contemporary Throbe Haberdashery) was the very uneven hem and the shortness of the white throbe the shooter was wearing while buying coffee at the Stop and Shop. While reading Lacey the description of all this made me laugh, and I compared it mentally to the fashion among urban American teen age boys to walk around in pants that are about to fall off, and show off the high and mid buttocks as well as the belly button. They are saying something with their dropped pants, just not sure what. Apparently these days Arabs do this with male hemlines.

Now I doubt if Anderson Cooper has read Lacey’s book, and I wonder whether in his various reporting travels in the Arab world he has considered symbolic communication — but all day I have been sitting here wondering whether anyone is going to pick up on this, and at least ask the question. Should not be all the difficult to find the author, Robert Lacey and ask him whether the hemline of the short Throbe wearing shooter matches what he was describing in his book. (The group that took over Mecca in 1979 were all short Throbe Wearers.) In fact, apparently in Saudi Arabia there has been action by police and intelligence types in recent years against those who wear the short Throbe. Apparently in Saudi Arabia these days if you want to burn down a video store as unislamic, or throw acid on an improperly covered woman, the first thing you do is shorten your Throbe.

Which leads me to my next consideration — did the shooter know that the Stop and Shop had a survailence tape system that would be checked out and probably widely broadcast once he did “the act?” He probably thought he was doing “Suicide by Cop” or that he would use his last bullet on himself, thus what might be on that tape could be a martyr’s message unlikely to be commonly “read” except in the Arab World. I am thinking about that construction — not saying it is or isn’t, but it might be an interesting question to ask. Anyhow, I am glad Anderson Cooper looped the tape over and over, because it caught my attention. I suspect his producer just thought we needed some visuals.

Anyhow, I really don’t want to discourage the reporters in Breaking News situations from putting on “just stuff” before a paradigm and narrative has been imposed on the story. I’d actually like a little more of it, a little less “editing” of what pops up.