One of journalism’s most basic tenants is “Be objective.”
And one of its most closely guarded secrets is that there are some stories that it is impossible to cover objectively.
In some cases, this because of deep-seated personal biases on the part of the journalist. That’s the classic case for one-sided, inaccurate journalism, and generally the first accusation that gets thrown out by media critics against news outlets that report stories that don’t support their own preconceived world view.
But that’s not the only sort of bias that exists. It’s not even the most dangerous.
Enter National Geographic’s Lockdown. A one-hour documentary-style program chronicaling life in various prisons around the country, it bills itself as an educational look at an aspect of life totally alien to most of its viewers.
Yet a story is only as reliable as its sources. And how do you give an accurate view of something when your only sources are murderers, pimps and thieves?
Lockdown serves as an example of how difficult it is to make television, a medium of unreality by its very definition, give an accurate portrayal of events. Putting aside the fact that the very presence of cameras tends to cause people to act in ways they normally wouldn’t (the girls gone wild effect), the people profiled in the series have no real motivation to give the people profiling them the pure, unvarnished truth.
Consider: you’re in prison for life, in all likelihood for a crime you did in fact commit. The environment in which you live is one of constant fear and intimidation, where one’s reputation for violence is not a detriment, but rather a key component in one’s social standing — and possibly, personal safety.
Now imagine a group of men with cameras come and ask you what its like. Do you tell them truthfully that it’s a hellish existence? Or do you, accustomed to lies and self-aggrandizement as a means of survival, fudge the details a little? Do you paint yourself in slightly more sympathetic strokes, make your life out to be something slightly more grandiose than it is?
Of course, most journalists try to compensate for source bias by interviewing a wide range of sources. But the rather unique problem of prison documentaries is that the only sources one is likely to find are so close to the story that its impossible for them to be objective. The medium itself doesn’t help, favoring as it does uncomplicated stories. Nat Geo does what it can, but it’s simply not possible to fit a great parity of opinion into an hour and not break the flow of the narrative.
Ultimately, Lockdown does what it can to show the truth behind bars, and if it falls short of that goal, it’s more due to the limitations inherent to such an undertaking than anything else. And certainly, it’s entertaining. Ultimately, however, the only way to get the truth about prison life is to be the one behind the bars.
April 8, 2009
Old enough to text, old enough for jail
The wonderful thing about going to school is that, believe it or not, you do learn things. Now, whether you expect to learn something about a particular topic is another story. Take for instance my recent experience from a general ed mass communications class where we were asked if we knew what “sexting” was.
I promptly responded by saying “phone sex through text messages?”
Wrong! It was something a bit more malicious than that as it turns out.
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