Bart Pfankuch is an investigative reporter for South Dakota News Watch. Write to him at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.
Whether writers realize it or not, we hear voices in our heads.
And often, listening to them is a sensible thing to do and not a symptom of insanity.
I speak not of voices of ghosts or those generated by an overactive psyche.
Rather, they are the voices of respected editors, colleagues, friends and family members whose opinions we value highly and whose input we can draw upon without being in their presence or sharing a single spoken word.
Listening to those internal voices almost always improves your reporting, writing, storytelling and general performance on the job. I am hopeful that in 30 years of reporting and editing I have touched a few journalists in ways that help them be more effective in their work.
I know for sure that my voice still resonates with at least one former colleague, even if only in a mostly humorous way.
About 18 months ago, I embarked on research on non-profit news organizations to prepare for a job interview for South Dakota News Watch, the non-profit, public-service news service that eventually hired me. I decided to call Halle Stockton, the managing editor of PublicSource, a nonprofit in Pennsylvania, whom I had edited when we were both in Florida. Halle is a rising star in journalism and I was fortunate to work with her.
After we spoke for an hour or so, she mentioned that to this day, more than seven years since we worked together, she still thinks of a phrase I often repeated to encourage reporters to be efficient in their daily duties to create more time to focus on the craft of journalism. I called it being high on the “Sh!#-togetherness Scale,” a made-up measure of functioning at a high level. I laughed when she shared how she still occasionally recalls that phrase, but I also felt a small tinge of pride that I made an impact on her work habits all those years ago.
For myself, the voice I hear most often is that of my wife, Dawn, a highly intelligent, critical thinker who carries a wide-open view of the world and all its problems, peculiarities and possibilities. When writing a long piece, I think to myself: “What would Dawn want to know next?” It helps me keep the piece popping along with facts.
I also think often of her father, Miles, a voracious consumer of news who was a teacher but is a farmer at heart. As a reader, Miles feeds on context – how news/life/trends/problems in one state or region compare to another. His voice prompts me to pursue sources from other states or regions or groups of people in order to provide that comparison and contrast.
Another prominent voice is that of Jim Stasiowski, a learned retired journalist who is a skilled wordsmith, though he may chafe at such a haughty title. “Staz” is a stickler for style, word usage, grammar and clarity of meaning. I was lucky enough to spend the last two years of Staz’s career working closely with him at the daily paper in Rapid City. Thinking of him reminds me to read over my pieces one more time to seek ways to tighten copy, sharpen word usage or follow style guidelines.
When it comes to being fair and accurate in South Dakota, a number of voices chime in to encourage me to be careful when referencing the Rushmore State. My editor, Maricarrol Kueter, and a former reporting colleague, Seth Tupper, are both long-time, knowledgeable South Dakotans who speak to me when I address topics that relate to the state. I know that one misstep about state geography, place names, locations, directions, history or well-known figures would damage my own credibility but potentially, in a tangential way, theirs as well.
Voices from deep in my past also sometimes ring out. I still recall an editor who told me to always say what is, rather than what isn’t. I think of an editor who warned me off my tendency to bury the news beneath long narrative wind-ups. When a piece sometimes falls short of expectations, I cut myself some slack by remembering an editor who insisted that imperfect stories still have value, at least to some readers out there. I sometimes channel my very first editor who told me that adjectives and adverbs were for lazy writers who were unwilling to seek out colorful subjects and active verbs.
I’m sure we’ve all heard that we should write with readers in mind. Of course, that is true. Still, there’s nothing wrong with listening to the voices from our past that remind us to avoid bad habits and do great work.
I encourage all writers, and editors as well, to consider whose voice they hear when they prepare for an interview or sit down to write, and listen once again to their good advice. Rather than a cacophony, those voices can form a chorus of helpful wisdom that each of us can heed throughout the long journey of our career.
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Defending all of us by defending a free press
Police raids in lieu of legal due process. Undercover surveillance on reporters because of their work. Street “sweeps” in which journalists are handcuffed and carted away to “headquarters.” The use of force as an alternative to courts and legal means.
Such are the tactics of dictators, despots and those for whom democratic ideals and the rule of law are expendable in the name of expediency, political gains or a desire to avoid being held accountable to the public.
Recent examples of these strong-arm methods have appeared here in our nation — and every citizen ought to hear his/her First Amendment threat alarm sounding.
Just days ago in California, San Francisco police raided the home and office of a freelance journalist, reportedly wielding sledgehammers and with guns drawn, in search of a leaked confidential police report. Journalist Bryan Carmody was handcuffed and reported taken to an area newsroom after a search of his home. News reports said, “officers seized computers, cell phones and other electronic devices.”
Carmody’s lawyer questioned why standard practice was not followed — that is, subpoenaing a journalist in search of such a document concerning the death of a public defender and long-time police critic. The lawyer noted that a subpoena would have allowed a judge time to consider more information, such as targeting a newsroom on specious evidence of a crime, before granting search warrants.
Hearst Connecticut Media reporter Tara O’Neill was arrested and briefly held in police custody May 9 while covering a demonstration against a 2017 police shooting. O’Neill, who Hearst officials said identified herself as a journalist and was well known to area police, was standing on a sidewalk as police shouting “Off the street” swept up protesters following a general order to clear the area. She was handcuffed, put in the back of a police car and taken to a police station. O’Neill was not charged.
On March 4, three reporters were arrested in Sacramento, Calif., as police began dispersing a group protesting a police shooting. A photojournalist in the same area was knocked to the ground by a police officer and his equipment damaged.
Documents obtained by a San Diego television station led to a March 6 report that the U.S. government has created a secret database and dossiers of journalists, along with activists and others, because of reporting and social media posts related to immigration issues. In some cases, the report said, alerts were placed on journalists’ passports and several reporters said they had been subjected to increased equipment inspections and questions by border authorities.
Granted, protest-related incidents could potentially be chalked up to momentary missteps in the heat of confusing, fluid situations. But then consider the atmospherics around all of these reports: A multi-group collaborative behind the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker website documents seven journalists arrested, 10 journalists attacked and six stopped at a border this year. Reporters Without Borders downgraded the U.S. three places, to number 48, on its annual World Press Freedom Index, noting that as of 2018 “never before have U.S. journalists been subjected to so many death threats or turned so often to private security firms for protection.”
I’d add one more observation about current conditions: Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable — and unnecessary — to even have a “U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.”
We should all be concerned when journalists — from news outlets we like and trust or from operations we don’t favor or find particularly credible — are prevented from representing us when and where news occurs. A diverse, unfettered news media (“the press” in the First Amendment’s words) was and should be seen as one of our best defenses against government excess or abuse — things that know no political tags.
Using force against a journalist doing his/her job is never acceptable. When police shut down a demonstration and include identifiable, working journalists in a “sweep,” they might cite public safety reasons, but as we have seen too many times in the past, it may be a means to blunt public accountability for their actions.
We have the rule of law and legal due process to avoid random actions by authorities, who must justify using the power of the state against any one of us, including journalists.
Just the other day, a social media post made an eloquent argument against targeting journalists by virtue of wordplay on an old saying: “First they came for the journalists…and we don’t know what happened after that.”
Defending a free press is, as our nation’s founders knew, also defending ourselves.