Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: November 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Journalism 101

An old friend and the best editor I ever had has surfaced on the Internet. Please take a look at http://www.larrymccoyonline.com/ and in particular his "New Essay." I'll only quote from the most important part: an Editors' Code of Conduct. Here it is and if you've ever worked in a newsroom, you should appreciate every entry:

I ( insert name ) do hereby pledge that I will never slap, stab,
slug, shoot, strangle, or suffocate a writer/reporter nor will I scream
"you stupid son-of-a-bitch" or "you're the biggest asshole I've ever
met and you obviously come from a long line of assholes" when
the aforementioned person turns over copy, either near or far
from deadline, in which:

---The lead sentence begins with the word "meanwhile."

---The lead sentence is 87 words long, has nine commas, four
parenthetical thoughts and ends with a question mark.

---Montana is described as a state in the Midwest.

---The writer/reporter, when questioned about a key element in
the story, says, "How would I know? I don't understand it myself."

---A person named Miles Brewster IV is quoted as an eyewitness
to a big apartment fire in Connecticut when three weeks earlier a
Miles Brewster IV was said to be the only person who saw a mother
of three drive her car with the kids inside into a lake in Utah.

---The name of the town from which the reporter is allegedly
reporting is consistently misspelled.

---The lead paragraph says so-and-so was badly hurt in an accident,
and the fact that this person is now the late so-and-so is buried in the
11th paragraph.

---The expression "as everyone now knows" or "as is obvious to
anyone" is used.

---The writer/reporter refuses to include any meaningful back-
ground information, claiming "we've already reported that."

---Glenn Beck is presented as speaking for "Middle America,"
wherever that is.

---The copy looks exactly like what was on the AP wire minutes
ago, including the same five typos.

---An analysis piece ends with the wishy-washy "only time will tell."

---The writer/reporter misuses (after having the difference
explained to him 2,367 times) the words "infer" and "imply."

---The writer/reporter, when asked about a quote that doesn't
make sense, says, "Well, I think that's what she said. I didn't write
that part down."

---Any politician who isn't from the East Coast or the West Coast
is said to be "a leading representative of the Bible Belt."

---The winners of the World Series are called the "World
Champions."

And don't miss Larry's Memoir. It's titled "A Life Spent in What Is Now A Frivolous Profession."

Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Journalism 101