Wrong Word To Use

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Petulant reporters

By Tim Cain - 6/17/2010 at 2:00 am

When your profession is reporting, you rely on others to talk to you. That’s what reporting is.

An additional part of reporting is letting your audience know that the people you’re trying to talk to – the ones that have the information – aren’t talking. As much as we’d like to be able to sometimes, we can’t force or coerce or cajole anyone to talk to us.

(I’ll revisit this briefly tomorrow with an update on Millikin grad and “Little Mermaid” voice Jodi Benson.)

Earlier this week on CNN, Anderson Cooper played a tape of 14 different nights in which he told viewers the company had not responded to or declined requests for interviews to talk about the Gulf oil spill on his nightly newscast.

In an interesting turn (and choice of words), The Associated Press wrote this as part of its news story:

Cooper’s harsh words were noteworthy, particularly given a lack of complaints from other networks. They left him walking a thin line between informing his viewers about BP’s unwillingness to answer questions on his newscast or appearing petulant that he’s not getting guests.

Apart from walking a thin line between reporting and editorializing, the AP story makes a curious argument.

How is it petulant to report facts?

The audience demands the information. When I’ve reported in the past that efforts to get a look at Decatur Celebration’s financial reports were rebuffed regularly (for me, from 2001 until 2008), that wasn’t petulance. (OK, maybe it was a little petulance. But that wasn’t the first thought.)

When I tell you, here or in stories in the newspaper, that it’s difficult to get interviews with the rhythm and blues acts Celebration books; or that Brian Shepard, the Decatur-based FBI agent who was a key player in the Mark Whitacre/”Informant” case, doesn’t trust the media and won’t do interviews; or that people won’t return phone calls or just plain don’t want to talk to me or anyone connected with the paper … well, that’s not petulance. It’s just the facts.

Petulance is when we remember those people who won’t talk to us now and want favors from us later. But we would never do that here.

Heh.