Find a more "surprising angle"
Because the threat to shoot a journalist in the head is not surprising enough.
What happens when yesterday’s “surprising angle” for journalists is no longer surprising enough?
What happens when the “We Report, You Decide” charade gets taken to its insane endpoint?
What happens when the facts get packaged as a Story that requires a hook, an angle, characters, stakes, and a dramatic narrative arc that will surprise and entertain you?
Nothing good.
From “Guess I Gotta Write This Goddamn Diversity Article Again,” by Stephanie Foo, Transom, 22 September 2020:
All journalists must ask themselves, “Am I being objective? What is an interesting new angle we can take on this? What hasn’t been done before? How can we frame this for maximum pageviews or listens?
“You seem nice enough, but when the race war happens, I won’t hesitate to shoot you in the head.” A white supremacist said this to me in 2017, while I was working at This American Life. During my interview with him, I recognized an unnatural composure in myself: I banked the quote away as a simple fact in my fact-focused, objective-journalist brain. Okay — white supremacists want a race war. Next question, I told myself, how does he plan on fomenting said war? See if there’s a surprising angle.
Having done a lot of reporting on people of color, I was encouraged to examine “the other side.” But when I shared the contents of this story with my editor, he expressed disgust at the subject’s vile views, then sighed and told me it just wasn’t surprising enough. I nodded dutifully and headed back to my office to tackle the next thing.
…
Can we collectively decide that when something horrible happens — like let’s say, a white supremacist gunning down a church full of Black people — we don’t gleefully barge into the office the next day, excitedly figuring out the punchiest way we can cover it? It minimizes and whitewashes people’s very real and deserved feelings of anguish and fear about these tragedies. Can we instead address these questions with the somber and empathetic attitude they deserve? Someone once told me about one editor comforting another crying journalist by saying, “Look at it this way — at least covering [an excruciating event] will be amazing for your career!” No. I hate to tell you this, but dude . . . it’s just a podcast. People are more important.
Read the whole thing here.
Related: Dissociative disorders…
… as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), via the Mayo Clinic:
Depersonalization-derealization disorder. This involves an ongoing or episodic sense of detachment or being outside yourself — observing your actions, feelings, thoughts and self from a distance as though watching a movie (depersonalization). Other people and things around you may feel detached and foggy or dreamlike, time may be slowed down or sped up, and the world may seem unreal (derealization). You may experience depersonalization, derealization or both. Symptoms, which can be profoundly distressing, may last only a few moments or come and go over many years.