By Casey Lartigue Jr.
Whenever I receive a request for a media interview, I recall what the late Chun Shin-ae said about journalism: "The interview is the honeymoon, publication is the divorce."
The beautiful interview that had everyone thanking each other later becomes a dispute upon publication about wrong information, quotes out of context and sensationalist angles.
I used to say reporters could avoid many disputes in friendly articles by sharing the text in advance, but reporters (and their nameless editors) would prefer to fight over facts after rather than before publication.
These days, the man-bites-dog story for me is when reporters get every fact right. I have read features about myself that my own mother could have truthfully testified in court that the reporter had written about someone else, not her eldest son.
People who have never worked in journalism or never been featured in the media seem to believe most of what they read. They will believe what a stranger blogging or working as a reporter writes before they will believe their own friends.
Other friends who believe what I say about myself will ask how a reporter could get things wrong, to which I tell them, "That's the reporter's opinion. I didn't get to read the article before it was published."
One thing reporters hate doing is sharing an article with a source in advance. This is nothing new; back when I was a cub reporter I was discouraged from sharing the text of an article in advance with a source.
Usually when I mention to reporters I could review the draft, some have even answered, "Uh-huh, that may be possible." They are probably smiling when they say it, knowing they will never do that, then laughing out loud later with their editors about my suggestion. Then come the mistakes in friendly articles ― what happens when it is confrontational, there must be even more mistakes.
I'm sure reporters try to get it right, but beat reporters write as many as 50 to 150 articles a year, even more when their outlets are active online.
Some will read back quotes, as I was taught to do as a college reporter. That's fine from the perspective of reporters, but the problem is a saying Rev. Jesse Jackson popularized: "Content without context is just pretext."
I have read my quotes jammed into contexts that did not make sense. The reporter had made up her mind, so that's why I tell friends: "That's the reporter's opinion."
I imagine in this social media-crazy world some reporters might be hesitant to share stories because sources would pass them around, screenshot them, maybe even post them before the article was published or posted.
Still, there must be a better way than the current process: Reporter hits on a story idea, does some research by making phone calls or checking the internet, interviews a source, then disappears to write the article, gets it edited by someone who doesn't know the source, then the article gets posted for the main source to read it for the first time along with everyone else in the world.
I've been in journalism in the U.S. as a reporter, dealt with reporters as a communications specialist and been interviewed many times ― and still had numerous articles that got many things wrong about me and the organizations I worked with. Now imagine the comedy and folly that can come when reporters feature North Korean refugees.
So many of the reporters would treat the interviews like they were interviewing skilled veterans, rather than North Korean refugees with zero or limited experience with media. It isn't unusual for reporters to ask me to ask refugees who have agreed to interviews to bring family photos from North Korea without even knowing if this could put the refugee's family at risk.
They would expect refugees to open up immediately about intimate details of their lives, to have every fact and angle probed and challenged. I try to warn refugees that to a reporter there is no such thing as a bad question; the burden is on you as a source to answer "no comment" or "that's none of your business."
Refugees try to answer, evade or even lie rather than putting their family members at risk. Reporters and intellectuals will dismiss the refugees as liars rather than examining the application of a flawed process to a population unfamiliar with the rules of their game.
Still, many of the interviews with refugees are like a honeymoon, although reporters consider me to be a homewrecker for sitting in on interviews with refugees.
After I introduce them, then so many of the reporters want to get the refugees alone. Then comes the divorce when the article gets published with errors that could have been avoided if reporters had shared their stories in advance.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) in Seoul. He blogs at "Voices from the North."
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The beautiful interview that had everyone thanking each other later becomes a dispute upon publication about wrong information, quotes out of context and sensationalist angles.
I used to say reporters could avoid many disputes in friendly articles by sharing the text in advance, but reporters (and their nameless editors) would prefer to fight over facts after rather than before publication.
These days, the man-bites-dog story for me is when reporters get every fact right. I have read features about myself that my own mother could have truthfully testified in court that the reporter had written about someone else, not her eldest son.
People who have never worked in journalism or never been featured in the media seem to believe most of what they read. They will believe what a stranger blogging or working as a reporter writes before they will believe their own friends.
Other friends who believe what I say about myself will ask how a reporter could get things wrong, to which I tell them, "That's the reporter's opinion. I didn't get to read the article before it was published."
One thing reporters hate doing is sharing an article with a source in advance. This is nothing new; back when I was a cub reporter I was discouraged from sharing the text of an article in advance with a source.
Usually when I mention to reporters I could review the draft, some have even answered, "Uh-huh, that may be possible." They are probably smiling when they say it, knowing they will never do that, then laughing out loud later with their editors about my suggestion. Then come the mistakes in friendly articles ― what happens when it is confrontational, there must be even more mistakes.
I'm sure reporters try to get it right, but beat reporters write as many as 50 to 150 articles a year, even more when their outlets are active online.
Some will read back quotes, as I was taught to do as a college reporter. That's fine from the perspective of reporters, but the problem is a saying Rev. Jesse Jackson popularized: "Content without context is just pretext."
I have read my quotes jammed into contexts that did not make sense. The reporter had made up her mind, so that's why I tell friends: "That's the reporter's opinion."
I imagine in this social media-crazy world some reporters might be hesitant to share stories because sources would pass them around, screenshot them, maybe even post them before the article was published or posted.
Still, there must be a better way than the current process: Reporter hits on a story idea, does some research by making phone calls or checking the internet, interviews a source, then disappears to write the article, gets it edited by someone who doesn't know the source, then the article gets posted for the main source to read it for the first time along with everyone else in the world.
I've been in journalism in the U.S. as a reporter, dealt with reporters as a communications specialist and been interviewed many times ― and still had numerous articles that got many things wrong about me and the organizations I worked with. Now imagine the comedy and folly that can come when reporters feature North Korean refugees.
So many of the reporters would treat the interviews like they were interviewing skilled veterans, rather than North Korean refugees with zero or limited experience with media. It isn't unusual for reporters to ask me to ask refugees who have agreed to interviews to bring family photos from North Korea without even knowing if this could put the refugee's family at risk.
They would expect refugees to open up immediately about intimate details of their lives, to have every fact and angle probed and challenged. I try to warn refugees that to a reporter there is no such thing as a bad question; the burden is on you as a source to answer "no comment" or "that's none of your business."
Refugees try to answer, evade or even lie rather than putting their family members at risk. Reporters and intellectuals will dismiss the refugees as liars rather than examining the application of a flawed process to a population unfamiliar with the rules of their game.
Still, many of the interviews with refugees are like a honeymoon, although reporters consider me to be a homewrecker for sitting in on interviews with refugees.
After I introduce them, then so many of the reporters want to get the refugees alone. Then comes the divorce when the article gets published with errors that could have been avoided if reporters had shared their stories in advance.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) in Seoul. He blogs at "Voices from the North."
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