By Walter Brasch
She quietly walked into the classroom from the front and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall.
I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students' eyes began focusing upon her rather than me.
"Yes?" I asked. Just "yes." Nothing more.
"You shouldn't have done it," she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper.
"Ma'am," I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn't reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately.
It took less than a minute.
The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, unannounced but highly planned. My assignment was for the students to quickly write down everything they could about the incident. What happened. What was said. What she looked like. What she was wearing. Just the facts. Nothing more.
Everyone got some of the information right, but no one got all the facts, even the ones they were absolutely positively sure they saw or heard correctly. And, most interestingly, the "gun" the visitor used and which the students either couldn't identify or misidentified was in reality a . . . banana; a painted black banana, but a banana nevertheless. The actual gun shot was on tape broadcast by a hidden recorder I activated.
It was a lesson in observation and truth. Witnesses often get the facts wrong, unable to distinguish events happening on top of each other. Sometimes they even want to "help" the reporter and say what they think the reporter wants to hear.
Reporters are society's witnesses who record history by interviewing other witnesses, and they all make mistakes not because they want to but because everyone's experiences and perceptions fog reality.
Of the infinite number of facts and observations that occur during a meeting, reporters must select a few, and then place them in whatever order they think is most important. Which few they select, which thousands they don't select--and, more important--which facts they don't even know exist--all make up a news story, usually written under deadline pressure. Thus, it isn't unusual for readers to wonder how reporters could have been in the same meeting as they were since the published stories didn't seem to reflect the reality of the meeting.
But there are some facts that are verifiable. We know that a South American country is spelled "Colombia," not "Columbia." We know that Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. And we know that the current World Series champions are the St. Louis Cardinals not, regrettably, the San Diego Padres.
But, for far too many in my profession, facts and the truth are subverted by a process that has become he said/she said journalism. We take notes at meetings, recording who said what. If there are conflicting statements, we try to quote all the opinions, even the dumb ones, believing we are being "fair and balanced." If a news source says the world is flat, we write that, and then see if we can find someone who will say that it is round--or maybe square.
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