Be careful while walking down road of interpretive journalism

Many consumers of media are already familiar with phrases such as “investigative journalism”, “development journalism”, “and solution journalism”, to mention a few. Some have also perhaps heard about “interpretive journalism” which is the subject of my column today.

What is it and how does it differ from other “genres” of journalism? What good does it bring to the audience and what danger may come out of it?

Well, “…interpretive journalism or interpretive reporting requires a journalist to go beyond the basic facts related to an event and provide more depth and explanation;” that is answering the “so what?” question. As Belgian media scholar Karolin Soojens explains, “…interpretive journalism is characterised by reporters expressing their opinion, speculating about the future or explaining why something happened, without referring to verifiable facts or statements from news sources.”

While this genre affords journalists the luxury of dabbling in “opinions” or punditry, it also predisposes them to perpetuating biases. So while the news consumers may come of well enlightened about events in the news, they could also end up completely misled.

I come to this subject because of two stories recently published in Daily Monitor in which the journalists attempted to paint an explanatory brush and raised more questions than answers.

The first story was headlined, “Besigye asks Bobi for public apology over attacks by supporters,” (October 12). The story originated from a press conference at which a journalist asked Besigye whether he was concerned about the personal attacks by National Unity Platform (NUP) supporters on social media to which he responded in part that he doesn’t know what’s driving them, and that even their party leader Bobi Wine had expressed his disappointment about the attacks in a private telephone conversation with him.

A follow up question was why Bobi Wine had not made his disappointment public to which he responded that this was entirely up to Bobi Wine, not him [Besigye].

The screaming headline and intro the next day was an “interpretive reporting” that went far off the mark and only achieved the effect of inviting more crude and personal attacks against the former presidential aspirant even when the body of the story (including the direct quote) more accurately reflected what transpired at the press briefing. In line with the NMG editorial guidelines, Daily Monitor did publish a clarification showing that no such demand for a public apology was made but the original story had gone viral and remains available online.

The second story is more recent, “Forced Covid jab for MPs sparks uproar” (Nov 1). The story was about Parliament’s communication that unvaccinated people (including MPs and members of the public) will not be allowed to access its precincts. While the directive meant that any MP that wished to access Parliament would have to take the vaccine or refuse to be vaccinated and hence stay away (this was captured in the intro), the interpretive headline implied that the legislators shall be forcefully injected with the vaccine. Splitting hairs? 

And as is wont in the new world of social media, this went viral and for many Ugandans that read only headlines, it is your guess what perspective they went away with. Parliament’s director of communication and public affairs, Chris Obore, was at pains to explain that no MP will be grabbed and injected with a Covid-19 vaccine!  So what do we take from these two interpretive stories? One, is that interpretive reporting presents great opportunities to explain the news to audiences; to put perspective to events, to connect dotes, etc.

In this case, the first story may have tried to speculate why Bobi Wine has not expressed his displeasure in public. Is it because he has no control over his social media supporters? (No one has control over social media!) Was he fearing to alienate himself from supporters?  Was Bobi lying to Besigye? Was Besigye lying about Bobi? Etc.

The second story could have gone into what this meant for the legislative agenda; for the quorum in the House? How many MPs have received the jab? Why are some MPs shunning the jab and what does it mean for their constituents?

The second take is that journalists must walk away from sensationalism if they want to walk the road of interpretive journalism, and that they should aim to achieve greater understanding of the news events, not number of eyeballs.