“If it bleeds, it leads’- NO MORE
As a young journalist with less than two years of schooling and practice, I was unleashed on the world to cover the business and politics of the city I lived in. With more than enough ambition and exuberance, I wrote about City Hall with an eye on landing a big ‘scoop’. So naturally, I sought out the scandals, the discrepancies and the anomalies.
I will never forget the conversations I used to have with the mayor’s press secretary whenever I called looking for a comment. He was (and still is, I’m sure) a lovely fellow. We used to debate back and forth, almost every time, about him being on the ‘dark side’- the party trying to put a positive spin on the story and cover up the negative. As a journalist, I entrusted myself as the one to mete out this negative aspect. “You media always look for the negative side,” he would joke with me. Deafened by my excitement, I could not hear what he was saying. I was convinced that government was a nefarious body bent on deception.
With a little time, some temperance and some experience, I now understand the role and responsibility of the media in telling stories. We have a responsibility to be objective, to provide fair and balanced reporting and to seek out a range of stories. We must regard every human being with respect and treat them with the dignity they deserve as nuanced individuals capable of contradiction and of both great love and hate. We must think, think, and think some more before we portray a situation. Of course, this is difficult on deadline, especially now as we are immersed in a 24/7 news cycle. But we must continue to try and allow this perspective to guide us.
My point of view has changed over the years and continues to moderate. Having been out of the newsroom for awhile now and living in Jamaica, whose media feasts on the negative, I have been ashamed over the years to be part of this profession. I see our tendency to focus on the negative. To engage in ‘gotcha journalism’. To disbelieve evidence that people may have honourable intentions but that they make mistakes or that they must compromise themselves at times.
All this to say by way of introducing the loveliest story I have read in awhile. It is my Mr. Royson James, an excellent columnist with the Toronto Star. He writes in the article I have linked to above about a young man who achieved a PERFECT score on a piano exam. This is, needless to say, so rare that it merits attention. The spotlight should shine brighter as a result of the context of late in Toronto: young people are killing one another with guns way too much.
This young man, Rashaan Allwood, 18, “received the national gold medal as Canada’s top student sitting an exam for the world-renowned Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto (ARCT) diploma,” Mr. James writes.
Who is getting the headlines though? The unnamed, faceless gunmen. The dead youth and the police who try to serve justice. The media has a responsibility here. Reporters must check themselves to ensure they shake the stereotypes free of their mind before they research and write these stories. Editors must ensure they reject the “If it bleeds, it leads” mentality. Consumers must read critically. And the young people, the vast majority of whom go to school, do their homework, listen to music and kiss their parents goodnight, must keep doing what they are doing, every day, without making headlines.
I will let Mr. Allwood’s father Filmore and then Rashaan conclude this post: (taken from Mr. James’ column, which I strongly urge you to read.)
“I am hoping this will make an impact on the youths of our community, to inspire them to achieve to be the best in whatever they want to be,” the dad wrote in an email late January, requesting news coverage…I fully understand the situation,” he wrote. “This would have been recognized as news if my son was involved in crime or drugs. Then we wouldn’t have enough room on our driveway for cameras and journalists.
“I guess my son has found himself in a field where ‘he does not belong’ because of his ethnicity (he is not white or Asian).”
Here is Rashaan: “It feels good because, really, it doesn’t matter what colour your skin is. Music is music. You don’t have to be Russian or German or Italian or Asian to do classical music. It comes from the soul. It all comes from the soul, and we all have a soul.”
