Defining news grows tricky
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
Columnists write stories, sometimes their own, sometimes someone else's. A story may inform, persuade or entertain. It's that simple. Columnists have a point of view, which they are obligated to pass on to the reader.
Reporters, on the other hand, are obligated to stick to the facts, who, what, where, when, why. News stories are supposed to be unbiased.
On Monday, Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald wrote a column about a Natick couple who left the Catholic Church and became Methodists because the church - or more specifically Bernard Cardinal Law - refused to allow their 5-year-old daughter, who is allergic to wheat flour, to substitute a non-wheat host in Holy Communion.
A bad ruling by the church? Definitely. An unnecessary hurt to a family? Yes. A public relations disaster? Absolutely. All of which led to a moving column that told the story of a family rebuffed by a church that preaches love, compassion and understanding.
By Monday night Fitzgerald's column was morphed into TV news. A television reporter tracked down the people involved, turned on a camera, stuck a microphone in their faces. There was the aggrieved family on the tube, telling an audience their woes.
But was this news?
Minutes before, on the same station, there had been footage of human beings pulled from rubble in India, the story of two murdered professors in Dartmouth, the usual mayhem of life in the city and the news that Cardinal Law was being sued for allowing a priest he knew had molested boys to continue working with children.
Thousands dead. Thousands more injured. A community in shock over the deaths of a beloved couple, and a cardinal accused of choosing to protect a priest at the expense of children. How does a child allergic to a communion wafer fit in?
TV has hours to fill, too many hours. So TV fills up the time. The trivial shares space with the tragic. Both come into the brain in the same weighted tones. Disaster and discomfort get the same treatment.
On a radio station two weeks ago what was promoted as straight news, an interview between a reporter and the mayor, morphed into a confrontation. Rose Arruda, who had interviewed the mayor before on WILD-AM, the voice on Boston's black community, had personally protested at Tom Menino's State of the City address, marching along with city firefighters. On Jan. 15 when she interviewed Menino, she came with a mindset. She didn't limit herself to asking tough questions. She let her bias set the tone of what should have been an objective interview. She interrupted the mayor. She raised her voice. She even threatened to take the mike away.
Arruda has since been fired.
But, of course there are people who say she really didn't know she had crossed a line because the line is ambiguous. What's the difference between questioning and badgering anyway? Between taking an aggressive stand and being aggressive?
What's the difference between news and hearsay? Between information and gossip? Between fact and conjecture?
Arruda says she was never warned by the station, never told what not to do. One would think she would have known. But perhaps not. You learn as you go and you learn by absorbing what you're exposed to. Talk radio is full of screams and accusations and interruptions. Television is full of small stories masquerading as news. It's all very folksy and hometown.
But in the process the bigger issues, the real news, is reduced, made part of a mix that is far too easy to swallow.
