Sunday August 7, 2022
Is it just my imagination, or is there a predictable pattern to news coverage these days?
The pattern starts with someone accusing, say, Hockey Canada for covering up charges of rape. Or attacking the Canadian Armed Forces for sex discrimination. Or a charity comes under fire for misusing donated dollars. Or a TV program unearths evidence that a renovation firm’s labyrinth of corporate connections defrauds both its customers and Canada Revenue.
The accusers are willing to go public with their names and faces.
The accused are not. They decline personal interviews. Instead, they issue carefully-worded statements which assert, essentially, that the conduct in question contravenes their code of ethics, didn’t happen, and if it did, won’t happen again.
The language used is numbingly bureaucratic. It avoids facts of any kind.
A hierarchy of communications
I wonder what school of communication theory these statement-issuers went to. They don’t seem to realize that there’s a hierarchy in communications. Any communications. But especially in corporate communications.
The specific always outranks the general. The personal always bests the corporate. The emotional always beats the rational.
Perhaps I can illustrate this principle by digressing into a different form of communication.
Legendary graphics designer Jan White used to teach that there are only three kinds of photos/illustrations in publications.
Number One is “oh, by the way” photos. Perhaps the Bank of Canada is raising interest rates. Again. The Bank’s Governor, Tiff Macklem, makes the announcement. So, by the way, this is what he looks like.
No one really cares. It makes no difference to the main story.
White’s advice: Make it as small as you can.
Number Two, White taught, is the “thousand words” picture or illustration. As the old adage says – a picture is worth a thousand words. Economists can easily throw a thousand words at fluctuations in commodity prices. A simple graph or chart gets the idea across more quickly and easily.
A map communicates more efficiently than pages of verbal directions.
A diagram of human anatomy shows how muscles work better than any lecture by a doctor.
White’s advice: Make it big enough to read easily, but no bigger than necessary.
And then Number Three, which White calls, “The Grabber.”
A Grabber photo is always personal. It doesn’t always have to show a face. But it always shows an emotion. A mother crumpled in grief. A runner exalting as he crosses the finish line. A carpenter half hidden in flying sawdust as she cuts lumber. A child rejoicing over a birthday cake.
Surprise. Concentration. Commitment. Anger. Sorrow. Relief. Delight.
Those are the pictures that make the front page. They leap off the page or the screen. You can’t help paying attention. They reach out and grab you.
White’s advice: Play The Grabber as big as you can.
Equivocations should be ignored
The parallels to news coverage seem obvious to me.
In journalism, human interest stories are The Grabber. We pay attention to a person we can identify with. The harassment victim. The patient shut out of an emergency ward. The kid raising funds for a charity with a lemonade stand.
If we care enough about that person, we’ll read the ho-hum stuff that goes with it.
The ho-hum stuff is the classic straight-forward news report – the impartial gathering of facts, figures, and contributing factors. It’s the “thousand words” that provides the background to put a context around the human-interest story.
It needs to be no more than necessary.
Unvarnished facts have to be really startling to become Grabbers.
Those corporate denials, equivocations, alibis and excuses -- they’re “oh, by the way” stuff. Basically, who cares? Of course you’re going to deny your organization fouled up!
Corporate statements, to my mind, try NOT to be personal. “The XXX Bank is pleased to announce that…” Who cares, beyond the bank itself?
Denials rarely come from an identifiable face. The wording is always abstract, impersonal.
Following Jan White’s advice, these statements should get as little credence as possible.
Especially anonymous denials.
I accept that some anonymous individuals quoted by the news media -- often “not authorized to speak on this matter” – may in fact be believable. But in such cases, I’m trusting the journalists or their organization more than the anonymous source.
The more sources are willing to level with me, to lay bare his struggles or to expose her pain, the more likely I am to believe them.
They grab me; impersonal re-assurances don’t.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
In the mail that came in about last week’s column on Pope Francis’s “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, I was pleased that no one chose to attack either the Pope or the Roman Catholic Church.
Any criticism seemed directed more at the social milieu out of which discrimination against Indigenous peoples arose. Vera Gottlieb, for example, wrote, “Interesting to read about the ‘papal bull’ or edicts, especially those referring to Christianity’s rights to claim land that was inhabited by non-Christians. And in today’s 21st century I find that not much has changed. At present I would call those papal bulls/edicts ‘killer kapitalism’ carried out by Western Christian white society.”
Ray Shaver: “Janice and I listened to all the Pope’s visitations during his pilgrimage to Canada. We also listened to those who were happy about the visit and those who were dissatisfied. In this context, Jim, we are both delighted with your article on the subject and fully agree with your viewpoints.”
Sandy Hayes also expressed appreciation: “Thank you for yet another common sense (bordering on an oxymoron, as it does not appear to be very ‘common’ anymore) article.
“Funny how war criminals ‘who were only following orders’, were not allowed to use this as an excuse, yet those associated with the RC church-other churches as well- seem to have escaped with impunity. Yes, I realize the RC church is a huge organization with bishops etc. etc., but surely those in charge of each area in Canada could have been held responsible....although, to be 'fair,' many of them probably thought it was best to 'take the Indian out of the child' in order for things to run more smoothly for the whites that were then in Canada.
“I didn't even KNOW about the 60's Scoop until my favorite night school prof in sociology told us. I could not believe it when my parents stated,‘Well, it was best for the children.’ So little compassion and so far apart from anyone who was not of British descent. My parents were good people in many ways, but so lacking in knowledge of others' needs and wants....unless they agreed with others, these 'others; were 'wrong' or mistaken. No wonder so many of us, who learned what we had been taught was nonsense, had a difficult time coming to terms with our own thoughts/emotions...who knew what to really believe or who to trust?”
Tom Watson wondered, “The question that sticks in my mind is this: To what audience was the Pope speaking?”
Mirza Yawar Baig: “I agree with you. Of course in Islam we don't have the theological problem of considering Jesus to be sinless.
“This Pope is a good man. And in my reckoning that's the highest praise that one can give anyone.
“World history is replete with stories of atrocities committed by one group of people against another. Sadly, there is nobody exempt from blame. Only what they did, differs.
“I ask for the courage to prevent evil from happening, which is far more important and powerful and effective than apologizing.”
Steve Roney: “To ascribe one particular sin to all members of the church, living and dead, as a corporate body, is the essence of prejudice, a dangerous logical fallacy. To blame all Catholics for abuses at the residential schools would, after all, be like blaming all Jews for the crowd calling for Jesus’s crucifixion — the old slander of ‘blood guilt.’ Or declaring all American blacks shiftless and lazy.
“All any pope can honestly do is what Francis has done; and the popes before him have done; and the congregation of Catholic Bishops have done, repeatedly; indeed, as the Church has done for two thousand years: acknowledge and condemn the sins of individual Catholics.
“This brings us to the ‘Doctrine of Discovery.’ The problem here is that there is no such doctrine of the Catholic Church. Consult the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911); there is no such entry. The ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ is an American legal doctrine dating from 1823. It would never have applied in Canada, and the Catholic Church is not responsible for the acts of the US courts.
“To be fair, the American legal doctrine makes reference to several papal bulls. So what exactly should Pope Francis disavow? And to what effect? The current state of Canadian First Nations has nothing to do with any of those papal bulls. To formally renounce this ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ would give it legitimacy. It would assert that it existed.
“The reality is that no matter what the Pope does or says, there will be no reconciliation between aboriginals and other Canadians. There are too many vested interests….”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns