When reporters become stenographers

Some bloggers call mainstream journalists ‘repeaters’ rather than reporters, because, they say, they plunder other people’s words, without attribution, and call them their own.

I thought it was just a little hyperbole, having spent the best part of thirty years reporting and writing for the main stream media.

A case in point is press releases. I didn’t, and no reporter that I ever worked with would, on point of honour, ever use the same words as a press release in their own copy unless they were quoting the issuer verbatim to illustrate what he or she had placed on the record.

The releases, you see, are written by flash Johnnie PR people and you just don’t use their words. Rather, you try to craft the rewrite in a news, rather than marketing fashion. Even better, you read the release, throw it aside and try to find out what they didn’t include in the release because that’s usually where the better story lies.

Oh dear. I’m too old to feel crushed but some really slack work by both TVNZ news and the Waikato Times has diminished my faith in modern newsrooms to the point where they have become a parody of themselves and truly are ‘repeaters’.