Who gains from single-sourced and half-finished news stories?
A reader drew my attention to the story headlined ‘Byabashaija shuffles 56 senior Prisons officials’ in the Daily Monitor online on Monday. He said except for the headline, he did not get a sense of who had been shuffled. Only two names and offices/stations out of the 56 alluded to in the headline are mentioned in the story!
What the reader was trying to say in a few words is that the story was incomplete; there were simply too many questions left in the readers mind. For instance, who are the affected officers and positions/stations? Who is in, who is out? Why are only two officers and their stations singled out for mention?
Did the reporter have the list or was he/she merely told by one affected person who only knew about him/herself and rumours about the others? Did someone have an interest in getting out only this fraction of information to the press? To what end? Why could the story not wait until all the information was in?
Every journalist is trained on the basic ingredients of a story. The 5Ws and H are the basic guides in writing or editing. A story that captures these areas – Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? And lately “so what?” – goes a long way in clarifying any questions that may linger in the mind after reading a story. An addition of voices, background and perspective to the 5W and H then makes the story more or less complete.
So from a very basic journalistic point of view, the reporter should not have sent this story to the editor and having received it, the editor should not have gone ahead to “edit” and publish it without requiring the reporter to fill the gaps.
Half-stories and single-sourced stories are the bane of journalism, and unfortunately, they are now too frequent in our pages and online platforms.
Take the story ‘Criminals target govt cars using explosives’ (Daily Monitor, June 29, page 5). Again it is a single sourced story from the police spokesperson.
There was no attempt to locate the drivers of the vehicles that were allegedly attacked to double check police’s narrative, but also to bring voices of the victims into the story. Up to that point, police had not identified the attackers who had reportedly been at it since February, with five incidents reportedly under their belt!
As night follows day, part two of this story (what in journalism-speak we call “follow-up story”) came the next day under the headline, ‘Gang attacks linked to People Power supporters’ (Daily Monitor, June 30, page 6). The story claimed police had arrested one suspect (we are not told when) who on interrogation, a link to the People Power movement led by Member of Parliament and presidential aspirant Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, was established.
Again the story does not ask many questions and carries an expected denial from People Power spokesperson. Some people may predict what part three may read like; arrest of half a dozen People Power supporters, a media photo parade, detention, etc.
Without necessarily discounting their truthfulness, all the three stories mentioned above indicate that journalists can unwittingly be used by different interests to feed the public on half information that only serves specific interests and leaves the audience with more questions than answers.
This happens when journalists drop their skeptical lenses, use single sources, do not ask questions, do not verify or double-check, and simply act as microphones of news makers or news sources.
When reporters fail as the first line of quality control, the second line – which is the sub-editor and editor – should catch it and have the stories curated to the expected professional level. That makes it difficult for an individual or institution to simply use a media platform in the manner they wish or to push their narrative.
The result is a media house is protected and its credibility as a platform is enhanced. The public that consumes the stories is protected from half-information, misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, etc, and is saved the headache of searching for answers or trying to verify what has been carried in the media. That is how trust is built or lost!
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