Journalistic Integrity? F@ck that!

Did anyone find the Bontempi panpipes.

I just don't know when I'll find the time... sigh. I guess I'm not going to that wedding after all tomorrow afternoon. Heck, then again I've never been to a wedding (except my best friend's elopement) so that might be a good thing to continue never to have done. (They're not my friends, they're HSA's, after all...)

Cross-posting, but excuse me, I've WORKED for an ad agency. There are questions of integrity even in the advertising industry.

And you REALLY don't want to get the journo's on this board's hackles up over whether what they are doing is "real" or not. Some of them do actually consider ourselves more than glorifed publicists, you know...

Weirdly, I read the CTCL night before last and it struck me, reading the HB piece, how *long ago* it seems!

OK, back story is this: the website in question were booked to do an interview this afternoon, but the original guy who booked it couldn't make it, and asked someone else who never turned up (due to miscommunication of the interview occuring during work hours). The band (OK, guitarist and their publicist) rang me, wondering if I could do it, I told them I was at work. They rang back an hour later, saying "hey, screw it, we trust you, just write the article anyway" or words to that effect.

I asked if there was a later date they could schedule the interview for, but they're out of the country for the next three weeks.

All I'm saying is that it's so fucking ridiculous for ento-j'lists to take themselves seriously. I mean, take your work seriously, whatever, but you are NOT REAL JOURNALISTS. I'm not a real journalist, if I was I'd be falling asleep at City Council meetings instead of Doobie Brothers concerts.
I mean, yeah, they're similar, and they both appear on the printed page, but don't fool yourselves. That's all.
So my answer is, fucking go for it, make it up, have fun. But don't be a self-righteous twat about it.

You should not lie. You should be honest. I mean, it's one thing to have an opinion. But what I would be doing, fundamentally, is lying. I think it would be interesting, and boundary-pushing if I said, flat out "I am lying - see if you can spot where I am lying and where journalism ends and fan fiction begins"

there's room to use music j'lism as ART, whereas straight j'lism has a specific purpose and is really more of a trade.

that could be really funny if you played with it and, as you say, made it very over to the reader... you know, sentences from them like "well, obviously I wouldn't say that if we were actually having this conversation."

aren't all the interviews in CTCL done like that?

Is a restaurant critic "not a proper journalist"? How about a theatre critic? How about an arts reporter? How about a political commentator?

If you don't have some kind of ethics even while working for an indie fanzine, then why bother maintaining any kind of ethics anywhere?

I like this idea... or even better, do the whole interview perfectly straight, and then at the end, you wake up, and Bobby Gillespie is in the shower. "Ah, it was all just a dream..."

I have a slight sympathy for Horace's initial position as a self deprecating entertainment journalist feel lack of self worth dripping from his pores. The ideal that there is 'real' journalism our there, facts which need reporting accurately and without distortion is a nice idea but one I think is merely played lip service to.

I work in a mid-sized daily newspaper. I know that what I do is a horse of an entirely different colour than what the people on the other side of the room do.

And "proper" journalists are all that stands between society and what? Turn on MSNBC and answer the question.

Meanwhile, I'm writing my fantasy Lou Reed interview in my head, which will inevitably conclude with his calling me a motherfucker and storming away.

::aghast::

I'm not trying to rush to save kate or anything, but dude. Really. You are being SUCH a dick. You can't make a point without putting her down?

I think the point is, if you have some kind of chip on your shoulder or issues about What You Do, you shouldn't make sweeping statements about that occupation, cause it will piss off other people who share that occupation.

I mean, what if I went on a tear about how useless indie musicians are, how they're a bunch of grubbling cunts who should give up and accept that they will NEVER be stars so GIVE UP NOW YOU FUCKING TOSSERS, NO ONE IS LISTENING, YOU WILL NEVER BE FAMOUS. If I did that, a bunch of indie musicians would tear me a new asshole. So I didn't, I said, "this is not working for me, I want to go do something else."

Don't generalise, it's makes a gener out of Al and Ise... or, erm, something...

Anyway, I never said that ento-j'lists don't serve a purpose, or are worthless or irrelevant or anything like that. I just think that it's dangerous/silly for them to put themselves on some sort of j'listic ideal pedestal (which I'm not even accusing you of doing).
I mean, we are one of the very last professions where it's acceptable to drink on the job. That in itself makes it worth fighting for.

I thought it would be boring to get too specialised and I write for some of the best magazines and newspapers in the world, but I am almost always BROKE.

This is not to knock music journalism.

In the end, it turns out that I am not doing it. Not because I thought it would be unethical (I came up with a very cute way that I would have made it clear what was going on while still keeping it interesting) but because of stupid, annoying, bitchy fucking politics at the organ in question. This is the straw that has broken the camel's back. I don't get paid for this shit, I do it for fun - and when I see my witty, inventive ideas pushed aside so that friends of the editor can get free tickets/albums, well, I don't see the point of doing it anymore. :-(

I certainly don't think its a stupid thing to say. It can however turn into a pretty arrogant slanging match.

However, other forms of journalism can and do make an impact, but's it's normally on a very personal level.

I would call music critics, food reviewers journalists. Their reporting is going to the gig, eating out etc. But there is more room for stylistic experimentation. I think problems arise when people forget that and think 'oh, it's only music, why bother hanging a piece on facts when there is my wonderful prose style'.

I'm not having a go at anybody here. Horace, I'm coming from a very similar position to you, albeit futher down the totem pole. I'm currently writing a lot about music/ banging out quizes for teenagers/ writing chatty things about make up, but I did train as a news journalist first, including the soul destroying experience of sitting in magistrates' courts for almost a year taking notes in bad shorthand.

Feel free to start the argument that news is more U+K than stories about local celebrities; I didn't see that as Horace's point at all.

Feel free to start the argument that news is more U+K than stories about local celebrities; I didn't see that as Horace's point at all.

Or were you talking about news Vs celebs?

One of the most frustrating things I come up against is that people DO think that entertainment journalism is all play, and super fun, that it's not WORK. Writing 12 inches on a Doobie Brothers concert (hell, ATTENDING a Doobie Brothers concert) is most definitely work. Interviewing doomed musicians who don't have a whit of self-awareness is work.
Overcoming with the fact that there are people who approach your managing editor offering to do your job for free is work.
Dealing with a managing editor who went to one Rush concert 14 years but considers himself more of an authority on pop music than you are is work.

I don't even like it when NEWS j'lists wear self-importance as a badge (recent headline on a story by a former schoolmate, a NEWS j'list, who looks down on what I do: EATING FOOD AT THE FAIR IS FUN).

this reminds me of why I like N.'s writing so much.

I just think the distinction between the two is a good and healthy one.

This has been cracking me up all day. Kate rules.

Horace remains otm as far as I'm concerned, of course he takes his job seriously, why wouldn't he. There's just no need for him to claim the (self) importance thing, which is good. . News reporting is more important because news is more important. News reporting is more important because a drop in the standards of news reporting is a serious matter. A drop in the standards of music reporting is when I read some wanker I don't like. Insignificant and arbitrary.

I have been brainwashed a bit by studying this stuff and this is probably the party line as far as lecturers etc are concerned, but I do genuinely believe in it.

Is this thread dead? Because H has opened a whole new can of worms as far as I see with the examples of Africa etc, I might start a new thread for that though.

This is interesting. Would this not be considered Hard News?
When a certain internationally known recording artist was busted for possession in my town, I was not the one dispatched to cover the hearing. That was the courts reporter's job. Recording star didn't even appear at the hearing, and the charges were dismissed, as they usually are for minor dope busts in Canada.

"Our show is obviously at a disadvantage with any of the other news shows we're competing against," Stewart said at the beginning of one episode, shortly after the war began. "For one thing, we are fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility, we are ... well, oddly enough we're about even."

ok, out of context (and thus unfair to suzy's general point), but that last sentence and a half cracks me up

'the high court refused today to give madonna & her publicist any further access to news media, as they were declared to no longer be in the public interest'

What I should have said was whatever fancy titles the government gives its press handlers, they're just fucking publicists trying to place stories that will show their charges in a good light, and make their rivals look like shit.

The most striking thing for me was the character of his deceptions: filling out a collective national myth. Making people braver, stronger, more patriotic -- really only half a step further in inventing America than those who don't fabricate.

He went adrift after 9/11 the articles say -- after 9/11 the story of the new strong america had to be told, the america full of randy travis ass-kicking resolve. I suspect he simply couldn't find it, knew that if he actually went on his beat and covered what he was supposed to that he would have *too much* integrity to lie about things he saw -- far easier to imagine them as filtered through the rest of the press, predigested, pre-twisted.

The reporter's job is to report the facts, the good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. Otherwise they've failed, you shouldn't be able to disagree with a news report.

not sure how this fits the anc3y thing though.

I'm just that half milimetre short.

I wish to protest at being called 'most people'

Especially by someone who doesn't even live round here

Yours Aye,
A Buffoon

I also wish to protest at being called 'most people'.
In point of fact, I have been attempting to _lose_ weight lately.

Yours,
An Amadan.