Colouring perspective

August 2018

Much is being made, rightly so, of ‘fake news’ these days. We’re not talking about spoof writing but bending and twisting fact and fiction then threading it through a particular agenda.

In a world of inquisitive and challenging readers the fake would easily be shown for it what it is. Unfortunately, if it is bite sized and believable, the job is just about done, especially if it reinforces what the audience wants to be true.

As newspapers, especially local ones, increasingly rely on press releases to fill their templates, it is not just the community perspective that is diluted but the objectivity.

However, the character of a newsroom still has integrity and no reporter worth his or her ink would ever fill a box with blatant propaganda and, thankfully, still considers plagiarism and fabrication the most heinous of journalistic sins.

But… ‘fake news’ has, to a degree, always been part of the editorial arsenal. Not in passing fiction off as fact, but in colouring perspective. While it is accepted that certain titles promote a chosen stance, there is also the issue of journalism versus reportage.

Certainly good reporting delivers the facts and meets the objective I was given as a junior: “We don’t tell readers what to think, son, but what they should be thinking about.” Journalism, in its fullest sense, can blur that. However, good journalism, especially on a local level is, to me, everything a newspaper should be. It has to have maturity, the context the community can relate to, and it often needs to be brave because there is no hiding place when you publish.

I’ve recently become a great admirer of James Shaw Grant, editor of the Stornoway Gazette between 1932 and 1963. Though perhaps now, somewhat unfairly, remembered as the ‘King of Quangos’ for his work in his post-newspaper days, his journalistic authority is impressive, and an example to all local reporters today. I read some of his copy and wonder what the reaction was to his work each week when he stood in a shop in Cromwell Street or passed that Free Church minister on his way to the office.

I’ve read the jibes at the paper from within the council chambers that he reported without comment, and I’ve empathised with him when his letters’ page had him reaching for a tin helmet, but he was respected then, and still commands respect today.

At the other end of the scale we have ‘Parson Smith’, a name I have only just come across. Now he, and I assume it was a ‘he’, was as different a hack as you can imagine.

I’ve not had much luck (yet) in learning more about him, other than he operated in New York in the late 1800s as a scribe, preacher and, apparently, quack. Editorially, this was no scrivener but the self-appointed readers’ conscience and taste in all he interpreted. Now as far as bylines go, Smith is pretty safe, especially in a sprawling and blossoming city. ‘Parson’ gives a degree of perceived piety, whether deserved or not.

And unlike Grant who had to face his readers on a daily basis, Parson Smith was anonymous. Other journalists from the time appear to take exception to his views but nearly 150 years on, I can’t decide what his agenda was, but he certainly had one.

Take this review of a ballet held in NYC. Now Parson Smith may well have been hoping to have crowds of outraged New Yorkers demanding the curtain fall immediately on the production. Or, he was maybe given a fistful of dollars for having them spilling down Broadway, armed with opera glasses.

You decide:

“We take a seat in the dress-circle, near the stage, or one in the circle of the parquet, from each of which we can hear and see sufficiently well. The first thing that strikes the eye is the immodest dress of the girls; the short skirt and undergarments of thin gauze-like material, allowing the form of the figure to be discernible through it in some instances; the flesh-coloured tights, imitating nature so well that the illusion is complete; with the exceedingly short drawers, almost tight fitting, extending very little below the hip, also of thin material; arms and neck apparently bare, and bodice so cut and fitted to show off every inch and outline the body above the waist. The attitudes were exceedingly indelicate - ladies dancing so to make their undergarments spring up, exposing the figure beneath the waist to the toe, except for such covering as we have described; stretching out a foot so as to place the limb in a horizontal line drawn from the hip, and turning the foot thus held out towards the audience; sometimes, in addition to the elevation of the stage floor, standing on a pedestal about two feet, more or less, in height.

One paper, in December 1886 delivered this verdict: “He takes occasion - like so many other pious people -to linger on, and gloat over, the very offences, if any there really be, he condemns. While censuring indecency, he contrived to be so indecent himself...” Now that's well written.

Picture: Edgar Degas 1879