Getting it right Stabroek News February 8, 2001 As the old joke among journalists goes, many a good story is spoiled by the facts. In the media one frequently receives ostensibly reliable reports of the most extraordinary happenings. Thinking you may have a scoop you start checking only to discover that the event never happened or that it did happen but not at all in the way the report you got suggested or there were other circumstances which cast the event in an entirely different light. One recalls in the early days of Stabroek News a young reporter turning in a story which stated that certain stallholders in a city market had lost their stalls as a result of interference by a certain political group. The story was `hot' journalistically. Unfortunately, she had not taken the elementary step of asking the political group for their version of the events. She was duly dispatched to do so. Having seen them and heard what they had to say, she rewrote the story purely from their angle. She did not have the experience or the journalistic sophistication to understand that there are always at least two sides to a story and that neither version might be completely correct. The truth may lie somewhere in between, or one might have to speak to other persons like the clerk of the market and other stallholders who are still there to get a better and clearer understanding of the situation. Facts can be complex and even when all the people involved are willing to talk freely, which is not always the case, they all tell the story from their own point of view. A lot depends too on the questions that are asked. If the young reporter had some idea of how markets are normally run it might have helped her to ask relevant questions and to obtain more valuable information. She might even have checked to see if there were any relevant municipal regulations. The profession of journalism, like any other profession, requires a combination of intelligence, experience and above all very hard work to be practiced properly. Getting it right is not easy. One can miss nuances that are important and change the meaning of the story, one can ignore or misunderstand the context and change its significance. And there is always room for more research. When a minister of finance produces his annual budget it would be useful to know what he said the year before and the year before that. And when he talks about the cost of living how is he measuring it, are the right things included in the index, are they properly weighted? Journalism can be as good or as bad, as useful or as misleading, as you make it. So much depends on what you bring to it, not only or perhaps not even primarily in terms of education, though that can help greatly, but in terms of energy and a commitment to be objective and professional and to do the right thing. Perhaps the golden rule for working journalists is that the first information one receives is always the beginning but never the end of a story. Before that story can properly be written or broadcast a great deal of work often has to be done to check the facts, speak to the other interests involved, get some background and so on. To do all this does not guarantee success, skill and experience are still required to give the story context, balance it nicely, report it fairly and write it lucidly. But if one is not at least trying to observe these basic principles, one is betraying the profession and besmirching its image. And there is little or no chance of getting the facts right. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today