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Tortoise and hare — a fable about deadline-driven journalism
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We have all heard the tale of the tortoise and the hare. Despite its slow speed, the tortoise’s tenacity helps it to come from behind to win the race while its conceited opponent sleeps.
The moral of the story is that being fast doesn’t guarantee victory, while the slower party doesn’t always lose.
This moral applies to journalism today. In a world where news is updated on a minute-by-minute basis, we are daily inundated by information. And so short has our attention span become that only the most eye-popping news items can pique our curiosity and sustain it.
But “slow” news won’t necessarily be sidelined by the demand for speedy, almost industrialized production of news, for speed means room for error.
The biggest victim of speed, or timeliness, is fact, the lifeblood of journalism. In media’s quest to beat rivals in breaking a story, corners are likely to be cut, important facts overlooked and news items sensationalized. Worse, some breaking stories are but the fabricated works of a few rumor-mongers.
A notable example is the recent case of a Chinese woman accused of falsely blaming a foreign man who allegedly came to her aid after she fell off her scooter at a crossroads in Beijing. The woman was cursed online for being ungrateful. And the foreigner’s presence makes this incident a matter of national “face,” which elicited more scorn for the woman.
In a dramatic twist , it was later revealed that the foreigner did collide with the woman’s scooter, causing her to tumble. And when he tried to flee but was stopped by the victim, he began to swear. As a result, many self-righteous moralists fell silent in shame.
Of course, we cannot blame them entirely for being gullible. It is the duty of the press to present unbiased news.
However, some news portals and newspapers did not bother with fact-checking. Without thinking twice, they published what they thought was probably another sequel to the series of published “good Samaritans wronged” reports — and paid the price for lack of due diligence.
Yet no one apologized for this slip-up and for misleading the public.
Age of fast-food reading
Great journalism invariably takes time. Take the Pulitzer Prize winners, especially reporters crowned for public service reporting, the most prized of all Pulitzers. Their dedication to a single topic for months, if not years, is rare at a time when patience is so scarce for anything that consumes time and funding — and not just readers’ patience, but editors’ as well.
But I’m of the view, opinionated as this might sound, that only the news that takes time to produce is worth the paper. The best news stories people are willing to pay for are invariably investigative stories. They may be slow in coming but they uphold the high standards of journalism in an age of fast-food reading.
In addition to increasing risks for error and compromising standards, being too fast can mean being forgetful.
As People’s Daily opined on Wednesday, who still cares about the orphans from a private kindergarten in Henan Province that was gutted in a blaze killing six children early this year? What was the compensation for the three students from Zhejiang Province who died in a plane crash in the United States?
These news events, which occurred less than a year ago, appear almost as distant as a century away, the newspaper said.
Indeed, after news goes stale, it sinks into oblivion. The plight of the individuals concerned, who not long ago grabbed headlines and raised eyebrows, becomes irrelevant, barely evoking any memory.
This sort of incoherent reporting has left the public hanging, waiting for a follow-up, which seldom comes. It is a sad reminder of how much of the media today has lost any true commitment to their vaunted “humanistic” coverage, and how frivolous is lofty talk of empowering the weak when the weak are abandoned for the next headline.
Let’s look back at the tortoise and the hare. It’s hard to say who is the hare and who is the tortoise today, because although online media is often where bogus, sensational and vulgar news originates, the print media has at times joined in the race to the bottom.
It is a time when everybody is becoming restless, as if “no big news today” sparks panic over loss of market shares to rivals. When even the tortoise wishes to hurtle and hop like the hare, it’ll be the end of a great motivational fable.
Which makes the work of those few journalistic “loners” all the more worthwhile and outstanding. They want more than just a hundred more clicks, something more enduring than meaningless tidbits about which celebrity wears which brands on which occasions.
Again, while few have the patience to read lengthy investigative pieces from beginning to end, significant journalism and analysis should never have to worry about having an audience.
As the People’s Daily editorialized, news professionals ought to insist on being slow in a fast-paced job and environment. In pursuing some fleeting subject under deadline pressure, they also need to spare time on salvaging the “leftover” news, to finish the unfinished business they’ve left behind.
So what are we willing to be?
Hare or tortoise, it’s our call.
(This column is named after the head-butting bird that feeds on pests.)
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