Avoiding Frauds

It should be obvious to anyone thinking of becoming a journalist that the job entails several important qualities: patience, curiosity, dedication and above all, integrity.  We are employed to go out and capture the truth, whether it be with a pen, camera, video-camera, or a mic.  This requires a certain integrity so that the instinct to "stage" never crosses the journalist's mind.

Staging was described in detail in Dave Wertheimer's article, "Stage, Staging, Stages".  He leads off the article describing a situation in which a journalist was shooting an NFL draft party and a videographer from a local news station showed up and started setting up fraudulent shots of party-goers celebrations.  This is clearly a journalist in the wrong.  Setting up shots for the sake of creating a quasi-authentic situations is unethical. 

The line gets hazier when one considers the fact that most stories are warped when the pressure of the interviewer's presence or camera coerces people into not opening up and giving status-quo answers.  But how does one create authentic shots with advanced photography and video equipment that tends to scare subjects into not acting like their true selves?  Dave offers some good advice that I will take to heart when conducting future interviews.  Look interviewees in the eye, smile, make them feel comfortable, use wireless mics, leave the room if you have to.

Because a story lacking authenticity is a dead story.

Kevin Ornduff